Becoming Modern

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 Stein''s friend and Marinetti''s lover; in New York as Marcel Duchamp''s co-conspirator and Djuna Barnes''s confidante; in Mexico with the greatest love the notorious boxer-poet Arthur Cravan; in Paris with the Surrealists and Man Ray. Carolyn Burke''s 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 woman''s important contribution to it.