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Lot Essay
Mina Loy was an avant-garde poet, designer and artist associated with Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism. Born in 1882 in London, she attended art school in London, Munich and Paris where at the age of 21 she exhibited six watercolors at the prestigious the Salon d’Automne in 1903.
Her life was plagued by many personal tragedies, including the death of two children and the disappearance of her second husband. During WWI, she moved to Florence, where she became close to Mabel Dodge, Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten and the Futurists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Giovanni Papini (the latter two of which she was romantically involved).
In 1916, Loy sailed for New York, where she was immediately embraced by the leading literary and artistic circles and invited to participate in exhibitions and contribute to magazines like Camera Work, Little Review and Dial, as well as play leading roles in various theatrical productions. As a frequent guest of Walter and Louise Arensberg, she met the man who would become her great love, the 'proto-Dadaist' and 'poet-boxer' Arthur Cravan. Loy and Cravan were married in Mexico City in 1918. Shortly thereafter, pregnant with their child, tragedy struck Loy once more when Cravan mysteriously disappeared on the coast of Mexico near Salina Cruz. Loy spent the rest of her life not knowing if she was a wife or a widow.
In 1923, with Peggy Guggenheim’s financial support, Loy opened a lampshade shop and gallery in Paris, where she also served as an agent for her son-in-law, the gallerist, Julien Levy. Loy was a notable influence on Levy and responsible for selecting important early works of Surrealism to be shown in his New York gallery. In 1936, Loy moved back to New York, where she exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery.
From 1948 until around 1955, Loy lived in a communal home on Stanton Street, in the Bowery. This is where she produced Christ on a Clothesline, one of the few pieces from that period of her career to have survived. The title of this work—Christ on a Clothesline—was likely inspired by Loy’s adherence to Christian Science, a belief she shared with her close friend and fellow artist Joseph Cornell. The present assemblage belongs to a series of mixed media works and collages which she called her refusées, depicting the street life of the 'unhoused' and dispossessed denizens of the Bowery. These works utilize found objects collected from the streets and alleys of the Bowery including rags, bottles, clothespins, cardboard and other abandoned scraps of 'non-art' material. Along with these three-dimensional assemblages, Loy also published an accompanying poem, Hot Cross Bum in 1949. In 1959, Marcel Duchamp organized an exhibition of these revolutionary works at the Bodley Gallery.
For the 1959 exhibition pamphlet, Julien Levy wrote: “Mina Loy, an English poetess of a vanishing generation lived for several years in Lower Manhattan near the Bowery; where she saw the frustrated excess of love by which the derelict has drunk, dreamed and died. Contrary pictures, these constructions are lyric in their drabness, whole in their fragmentation; with unabashed Victorian sugar Mina Loy has confected, not the poor and humble, but the beatific and intoxicated bums; those who are, together with poets, 'lepers of the moon, all magically diseased,' the aristocrats of the dispossessed—now glorified. This increment of 'pulverous pastures of poverty'…what jewels to have been discovered in the almost extinct ashcans of the bowery” (exh. cat., op. cit., 1959). Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs purchased this important construction from the Bodley Gallery exhibition.
Her life was plagued by many personal tragedies, including the death of two children and the disappearance of her second husband. During WWI, she moved to Florence, where she became close to Mabel Dodge, Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten and the Futurists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Giovanni Papini (the latter two of which she was romantically involved).
In 1916, Loy sailed for New York, where she was immediately embraced by the leading literary and artistic circles and invited to participate in exhibitions and contribute to magazines like Camera Work, Little Review and Dial, as well as play leading roles in various theatrical productions. As a frequent guest of Walter and Louise Arensberg, she met the man who would become her great love, the 'proto-Dadaist' and 'poet-boxer' Arthur Cravan. Loy and Cravan were married in Mexico City in 1918. Shortly thereafter, pregnant with their child, tragedy struck Loy once more when Cravan mysteriously disappeared on the coast of Mexico near Salina Cruz. Loy spent the rest of her life not knowing if she was a wife or a widow.
In 1923, with Peggy Guggenheim’s financial support, Loy opened a lampshade shop and gallery in Paris, where she also served as an agent for her son-in-law, the gallerist, Julien Levy. Loy was a notable influence on Levy and responsible for selecting important early works of Surrealism to be shown in his New York gallery. In 1936, Loy moved back to New York, where she exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery.
From 1948 until around 1955, Loy lived in a communal home on Stanton Street, in the Bowery. This is where she produced Christ on a Clothesline, one of the few pieces from that period of her career to have survived. The title of this work—Christ on a Clothesline—was likely inspired by Loy’s adherence to Christian Science, a belief she shared with her close friend and fellow artist Joseph Cornell. The present assemblage belongs to a series of mixed media works and collages which she called her refusées, depicting the street life of the 'unhoused' and dispossessed denizens of the Bowery. These works utilize found objects collected from the streets and alleys of the Bowery including rags, bottles, clothespins, cardboard and other abandoned scraps of 'non-art' material. Along with these three-dimensional assemblages, Loy also published an accompanying poem, Hot Cross Bum in 1949. In 1959, Marcel Duchamp organized an exhibition of these revolutionary works at the Bodley Gallery.
For the 1959 exhibition pamphlet, Julien Levy wrote: “Mina Loy, an English poetess of a vanishing generation lived for several years in Lower Manhattan near the Bowery; where she saw the frustrated excess of love by which the derelict has drunk, dreamed and died. Contrary pictures, these constructions are lyric in their drabness, whole in their fragmentation; with unabashed Victorian sugar Mina Loy has confected, not the poor and humble, but the beatific and intoxicated bums; those who are, together with poets, 'lepers of the moon, all magically diseased,' the aristocrats of the dispossessed—now glorified. This increment of 'pulverous pastures of poverty'…what jewels to have been discovered in the almost extinct ashcans of the bowery” (exh. cat., op. cit., 1959). Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs purchased this important construction from the Bodley Gallery exhibition.