The Rhythm of Eternity

Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), artist, writer and adventurer, is one of the most celebrated American modernists, but he remains a controversial figure because of his political activism and personal life. This book emphasizes the interplay between Kent’s public persona and his private self. A man of considerable charm and vitality, he led an outwardly tempestuous existence – especially in affairs of the heart – but, at the same time, he created much of his best art in solitude. He was a romantic who fell violently in love and then decisively out of it. He loved many women, but he thought only of his own needs in his relationships with them; he thought the profession of artist gave him leeway to think only of his own needs. He strove, sometimes with great difficulty, to achieve material needs, but his art is replete with transcendental yearnings. By confronting the contradictions between the artist and the man, this book offers the first sustained study to connect those opposing sides of Kent’s character. In doing so, it breaks new ground: rather than treating his work and his private life in isolation, it reveals how the tensions between the two shaped both—and in the process uncovers, with unprecedented clarity, the tortured soul of one of America’s most important modernist artists. This is the first volume in Dissident Biographies, a new series.