Meryle Secrest

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Meryle Secrest (* as June Meryle Doman in Bath , England ) is an American author and journalist best known for her biographies of artists and musicians.

Life

Meryle Doman was born and raised in England. Her father Albert Edward Doman was a toolmaker , her mother Olive Edith Doman, nee Love, was a factory worker. In 1948 the family emigrated to Canada with Meryle . Meryle Doman began in 1949 as an editor with responsibility for women of the Hamilton News in Hamilton ( Ontario to work). In 1950 she changed newspapers and worked until 1951 as a correspondent for the Bristol Evening Post from Bristol . In 1953 she married the journalist David Waight Secrest and took his name. They left Canada and settled in the United States. In 1957, Meryle Secrest took on American citizenship.

After several interim journalistic positions, Secrest began working for the Washington Post in 1961 , first as a feature writer, then from 1969 as a reporter for the culture department, and from 1972 as an editor and art critic. In 1975 she gave up her permanent position at the Post and works from now on as a freelance journalist for the Post , the New York Times and other publications. In 1981 she received a Guggenheim scholarship . From 2002 to 2004, Secrest was Professor of English at George Mason University in Fairfax , VA . Secrest lives in Washington, DC

In her work for the Washington Post , she quickly specialized in conducting extensive interviews with artists and writers, such as Leonard Bernstein and Anaïs Nin . As the author of a number of biographies of famous people from the art and music world, she continued this work, including biographies of the art historians and art collectors Bernard Berenson , Kenneth Clark and Joseph Duveen , the musicians and composers Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim , the artists Salvador Dalí and Romaine Brooks and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright . Her biography of the art collector Berenson was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and the American Book Award in 1981. In 2006 she was one of ten recipients of the National Humanities Medal that year .

In their biographies, Secrest concentrates on the psychological motives of the people described and searches for internal turning points and conflicts. The biographies of the artists and musicians themselves contain little content, which the cultural historian Louis Menand describes in the New Yorker as both a sensible limitation and a weakness: Secrest, who talks about surrealist painters, symbolist painters, art dealers, art historians and musical composers alike , who writes classical conductors and architects, can hardly be an expert in all of these areas. On the other hand, accessing them runs the risk of merely satisfying the curiosity of their readers about the weaknesses of great artists without really contributing to an understanding of their work.

Works

  • Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks . Doubleday, Garden City (NY) 1974, ISBN 0-385-03469-5 .
  • Being Bernard Berenson . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1979, ISBN 0-03-018411-8 .
  • Kenneth Clark: A Biography . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1984, ISBN 0-297-78398-X .
  • Salvador Dalí . Dutton, New York 1986, ISBN 0-525-24459-X .
  • Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography . Knopf, New York 1992, ISBN 0-394-56436-7 .
  • Leonard Bernstein: A Life . Knopf, New York 1994, ISBN 0-679-40731-6 .
  • Stephen Sondheim: A Life . Knopf, New York 1998, ISBN 0-679-44817-9
  • Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers . Knopf, New York 2001, ISBN 0-375-40164-4 .
  • Duveen: A Life in Art . Knopf, New York 2004, ISBN 0-375-41042-2 .
  • Shoot the Widow: Adventurers of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject . Knopf, New York 2007, ISBN 0-307-26483-1 . (Secrest's autobiography and reflections on biographical writing in general.)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Simon Guggenheim Foundation - Meryle Secrest. In: gf.org. Retrieved February 12, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Transitions ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gazette.gmu.edu archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: The Mazon Gazette, June 23, 2004.
  3. ^ President Bush Announces 2006 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Recipients . White House press release, Nov. 8, 2006.
  4. ↑ Louis Menand: Lives of Others ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.newyorker.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: The New Yorker, August 6, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Secrest, Meryle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Doman, June Meryle (maiden name); Beveridge, Meryle Secrest (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Bath