“The arts in America owe plenty to Kirstein–a brilliant, omnivorous personality who died in 1996. From the 1930s to the 80s he worked as a presenter, promoter, fund-raiser and impresario. He made his mark on the dance world by cofounding the New York City Ballet with choreographer George Balanchine. But Kirstein’s worlds were not all highbrow and haughty: Duberman dares to consider Kirstein’s tumultuous, sometimes clandestine and juicy private life as evidence of his high tolerance for risk–a necessary quality when bringing bold new art to a suspicious public.”
–Time Out Chicago
“Impressive . . . gripping . . . Duberman digs deeply, and compassionately, into [Lincoln Kirstein’ s] queer core, illuminating how Kirstein’s sexuality shaped his impact on American arts, from the New York City Ballet to Lincoln Center. Dance fans will delight at Duberman’s astute, unsparing critical summation of his bitchy, brilliant subject’ s relationship with dance choreographer George Balanchine . . . [Anyone] interested in Manhattan’s gay demimonde will have great fun connecting the homosexual dots.”
–The Bottomline
“The encomia have been arriving this spring, for [Kirstein’s] centenary. He is credited with bringing ballet to America . . . [and] it was [Kirstein and George Balanchine’s] efforts that, in time, created a truly American style of dancing. . . . Duberman enumerates Kirstein’s many endeavors in this important biography, the first. Among other things, Kirstein started the literary journal Hound and Horn and also founded the scholarly journal Dance Index; he helped create a groundbreaking art society at Harvard; he had a role in shaping Lincoln Center; wrote fifteen books and countless articles on dance, literature, art, and film; laid the foundation for a Latin American art collection at the Museum of Modern Art, which was ahead of its time; and endorsed or otherwise was linked with seemingly everyone who mattered in the arts before midcentury . . . Kirstein’s network reminds us how much American arts and letters at midcentury were shaped by a relatively small, largely Harvard-educated, mostly gay group of men who always complained about each other but together accomplished remarkable feats. No one worked more selflessly than Kirstein . . . . Kirstein’s combative letters and diary [entries], quoted at length, enliven Duberman’s biography. . . . In addition to biographies of Paul Robeson, James Russell Lowell, and others, Duberman has written various memoirs and histories of gay culture. He treats Kirstein as a kindred soul, with sympathy . . . [in this] admiring but balanced [biography].”
–Michael Kimmelman, The New York Review of Books
“Few people have contributed more to ballet in America than Lincoln Kirstein, who imported George Balanchine and with him founded the New York City Ballet. Kirstein was also instrumental in creating Lincoln Center. One of the most perspicacious analysts of American culture, Duberman has painted a subtle, detailed portrait of a hard-driving force of nature. In addition, his profound knowledge of the byways of gay life in 20th-century America makes him superbly qualified to help us understand what made his subject–butch yet sensitive, bisexual yet lastingly married–tick.”
–The Atlantic Monthly
“A careful, well-assembled portrait of a man who gave his life to the arts he loved. . . . Duberman has done a fine job with a remarkably difficult biographical subject, doing justice to Kirstein’s often-ineffable contributions to projects, and offering a glimpse into the complex consciousness of a talented, irascible, generous and occasionally maddening individual. While not without his faults, Kirstein was a giant of American arts, a colossus who single-handedly paved the way for the flourishing, well-established arts community of today.”
–Saul Austerlitz, San Francisco Chronicle
“[Kirstein] will always be remembered for bringing George Balanchine to America and nurturing the glorious exploit that was the New York City Ballet. But he was also a creative spirit in his own right, the author of audaciously imaginative books about sculpture and dance, as well as of several enduring experiments in the art of autobiography. . . . [His] life was almost incredible in its richness. Kirstein grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Boston and went to Harvard, where in his early twenties he founded and co-edited a now legendary avant-garde magazine called Hound and Horn and organized the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, which is widely viewed as the precursor to the Museum of Modern Art. His energy and drive, which sometimes seemed almost superhuman, were eventually complicated by periods of acute mental distress, some of which climaxed in hospitalizations. And his personal life has other intricacies, combining as it did a deep and enduring marriage to Fidelma Cadmus, the sister of the painter Paul Cadmus, with many love affairs with young men. . . . Duberman is a very able author. He has produced a book that is fluid, lucid, intelligent. He evaluates the tangled strands of Kirstein’s private life with sensitivity and generosity. . . . What comes through in [his] biography is a tale of two generations–how the old-style philanthropic populism of the early twentieth century was transformed into the avant-garde populism that would give its greatest expression in George Balanchine’s company, the New York City Ballet. . . . Kirstein’ s career is a rare, perhaps unique case of old-fashioned public-spiritedness carried to the level of artistic genius. His accomplishments boggle the mind. . . . Nobody has done more to give the loftiest artistic achievements their rightful place in a democratic society. . . . Duberman gives an excellent sense of Kirstein’s almost instinctive genius in organizational matters. . . . In his fierce individualism and his passionate sense of community, in his desire to both safeguard the mysteries of art and make art available to a widening public–in all of this Lincoln Kirstein was quintessentially the American artistic spirit.”
–Jed Perl, The New Republic
“Lincoln Kirstein–patron of the performing, visual, and literary arts; novelist; poet; critic and historian of dance, photography and painting–was one of nature’s titans. . . . But what made him exceptional was that he acted as if his main motto were not ‘I am’ or ‘I do’ but ‘I serve.’ . . . This inspiring self-denying quality is at the heart of Martin Duberman’s new biography, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein. . . . The book is at its best when Kirstein is successfully engaged on multiple fronts. Mr. Duberman quietly marvels, as any reader must too, at how it was not enough for Kirstein in 1948 to forge the New York City Ballet, his life’s single greatest project. Despite immense struggles of organization and fund-raising that that task required, it also turns out that in 1948 Kirstein was busy in the art world: He organized an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. . . . He also gave a lecture tour ranging from Boston to Chicago and presented the Hunter College premiere of an opera he commissioned. Kirstein had many other years as busy as that, and on just as many different fronts. Mr. Duberman’s biography, drawing on vast resources of unpublished diaries and correspondence, steers us through. . . . [and] once Kirstein’s plural worlds are all well defined, Mr. Duberman is driving in top gear. The narrative for 1945, for example, is particularly exciting, as Kirstein, serving with the American Army in Europe, is central to the recovery of the van Eyck ‘Adoration of the Lamb,’ which the Germans had stolen in 1942 and hidden in a salt mine in Austria. Since the world of performing arts is littered with old sexual gossip, we need biographies as sensitive as this to connect private life to public art with honesty, seriousness and a sense of proportion. It has never been a secret that Kirstein, an intensely sexual creature, was involved with a number of men. . . . Just how he combined this with some serious heterosexual relationships in his youth, and with his marriage to Fidelma Cadmus, is where Mr. Duberman is at his most delicate. . . . And his Kirstein becomes especially vivid when in the company of women. . . . The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein is so richly detailed that it must be consulted by those interested in all whom Kirstein’s life brushed. . . . Much new material emerges here about George Balanchine above all. . . . [Mr. Duberman] shows us, powerfully, the titan’s work, his strength and his incidental afflictions. The book has a gathering force.”
–Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
“Lincoln Kirstein was, for most of the 20th century, America’ s mightiest cultural swizzle stick. He was a skilled critic, historian, art collector and diarist, and a not-bad poet and novelist. But his real gift was for flushing out and nourishing the talent he spotted all around him. . . . Kirstein is best remembered as a ballet visionary . . . In 1933, when he was just a few years out of college, Kirstein brought George Balanchine to America . . . [and] pulled dance to the vital center of American arts. . . . [T]hanks to the crazy brio of its subject, the first half of The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein roars past at terrific speed. . . . In many respects, Duberman is ideally suited to telling this particular story. An adept biographer, he possesses a maverick streak; Duberman publicly announced his homosexuality in 1972 in his book Black Mountain. . . . Kirstein’s own complicated sexuality provides the emotional core of this new book, which is about how a quintessential outsider–‘a queer, Jewish intellectual,’ in Duberman’s words–became the century’s consummate cultural insider. . . . [Duberman] links Kirstein’s sexual obsessions, with grace and insight, to his other achievements. . . . [Kirstein] had enormous charm . . . . [but] among his close friends he exhibited a campy and terrifically bitchy side, and thank God for it, and also for the diary he kept. . . . Kirstein’s [voice] is in living color. . . . [The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein] becomes genuinely moving in its final chapters as Kirstein, who suffered for decades from bipolar disorder, has mental breakdowns and undergoes electric shock. Most affecting is his desire to remain relevant, in the mix. . . . Kirstein’s personality ran to extremes; raging blowups were followed by acts of extreme kindness. . . . ‘You are a pearl of an angel, and yet Mephistopheles as well,’ a friend wrote. The phrase ‘Mephistophelian angel,’ as Duberman notes, is not a bad description of the man . . . [The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein] faithfully captures the busy doings of a 20th century cultural angel.”
–Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
“Lincoln Kirstein was one of the 20th century’s great impresarios of art and culture…Few have contributed more, or more directly, to the artistic enrichment of the nation. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein, written with authority and elegance by Martin Duberman, is thus an eye-opening account of what one might call the shadow-side of cultural history. For artists, no matter how bohemian their lifestyles, need commissions, theaters, galleries, patrons, critics, students and, sometimes, comforters. All these Lincoln Kirstein worked hard to provide. His friends, and usually his debtors, cut across all the arts. . . . Certainly every headlining name in American dance appears in these pages–from Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille to Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. [We] already know a good deal about most of these eminences, though literary and artsy gossip is always welcome. . . . Where Duberman truly excels is in giving equal attention to the people behind the scenes. . . . Martin Duberman has written a superb biography of a man who early on recognized that literature and the fine arts don’t only need creative spirits, they also need champions. Lincoln Kirstein spent his time, his energy and, not least, his money well. We are his beneficiaries.”
–Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World
“Engrossing . . . Unfailingly generous . . . The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein is a necessarily intrepid work. It is the first book entirely devoted to [Kirstein’s] prodigious life and career and Duberman’s mission has been made especially daunting by the quantity of material that Kirstein left behind, as well as by Kirstein’s tendency, in his autobiographical work, to obfuscate, exaggerate, and lie . . . The happy news is that Duberman has proved equal to the difficulties both of the job and of the highly outspoken, often irascible man…The shear breadth of Kirstein’s endeavor has made him appear to many people to be the last historical example of the Renaissance man. . . . When times were good, a splendid social life was overseen by his wife, Fidelma, and the guests–from the dancers of the corps de ballet to W. H. Auden–were the very best in body and mind. . . . About Kirstein’s enduring personal appeal, despite the inroads of [mental] illness, Duberman leaves us in no doubt. . . . Like all good biographers, Duberman is part detective and part judge, but the most appealing aspect of his book is that he seems to love his subject more than Kirstein ever loved himself.”
–Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker
QUICK VIEW
