Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy

The poet and visual artist Mina Loy has long had an underground reputation as an exemplary avant-gardist. Born in London of mixed Jewish and English parentage and a much photographed beauty she moved in the pivotal circles of international modernism―in Florence as Gertrude Steins friend and Marinettis lover; in New York as Marcel Duchamps co-conspirator and Djuna Barness confidante; in Mexico with the greatest love the notorious boxer-poet Arthur Cravan; in Paris with the Surrealists and Man Ray. Carolyn Burkes riveting authoritative biography Becoming Modern brings this highly original and representative figure wonderfully alive in the process giving us a new picture of modernism―and one womans important contribution to it.