Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film
Iris Barry (1895–1969) was a pivotal modern figure and one of the first intellectuals to treat film as an art form, appreciating its far-reaching, transformative power. Although she had the bearing of an aristocrat, she was the self-educated daughter of a brass founder and a palm-reader from the Isle of Man. An aspiring poet, Barry attracted the attention of Ezra Pound and joined a demimonde of Bloomsbury figures, including Ford Maddox Ford, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Waley, Edith Sitwell, and William Butler Yeats. She fell in love with Pound's eccentric fellow Vorticist, Wyndham Lewis, and had two children by him.

In London, Barry pursued a career as a novelist, biographer, and critic of motion pictures. In America, she joined the modernist Askew Salon, where she met Alfred Barr, director of the new Museum of Modern Art. There she founded the museum's film department and became its first curator, assuring film's critical legitimacy. She convinced powerful Hollywood figures to submit their work for exhibition, creating a new respect for film and prompting the founding of the International Federation of Film Archives.

Barry continued to augment MoMA's film library until World War II, when she joined the Office of Strategic Services to develop pro-American films with Orson Welles, Walt Disney, John Huston, and Frank Capra. Yet despite her patriotic efforts, Barry's "foreignness" and association with such filmmakers as Luis Buñuel made her the target of an anticommunist witch hunt. She eventually left for France and died in obscurity. Drawing on letters, memorabilia, and other documentary sources, Robert Sitton reconstructs Barry's phenomenal life and work while recasting the political involvement of artistic institutions in the twentieth century.
1116342145
Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film
Iris Barry (1895–1969) was a pivotal modern figure and one of the first intellectuals to treat film as an art form, appreciating its far-reaching, transformative power. Although she had the bearing of an aristocrat, she was the self-educated daughter of a brass founder and a palm-reader from the Isle of Man. An aspiring poet, Barry attracted the attention of Ezra Pound and joined a demimonde of Bloomsbury figures, including Ford Maddox Ford, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Waley, Edith Sitwell, and William Butler Yeats. She fell in love with Pound's eccentric fellow Vorticist, Wyndham Lewis, and had two children by him.

In London, Barry pursued a career as a novelist, biographer, and critic of motion pictures. In America, she joined the modernist Askew Salon, where she met Alfred Barr, director of the new Museum of Modern Art. There she founded the museum's film department and became its first curator, assuring film's critical legitimacy. She convinced powerful Hollywood figures to submit their work for exhibition, creating a new respect for film and prompting the founding of the International Federation of Film Archives.

Barry continued to augment MoMA's film library until World War II, when she joined the Office of Strategic Services to develop pro-American films with Orson Welles, Walt Disney, John Huston, and Frank Capra. Yet despite her patriotic efforts, Barry's "foreignness" and association with such filmmakers as Luis Buñuel made her the target of an anticommunist witch hunt. She eventually left for France and died in obscurity. Drawing on letters, memorabilia, and other documentary sources, Robert Sitton reconstructs Barry's phenomenal life and work while recasting the political involvement of artistic institutions in the twentieth century.
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Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film

Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film

by Robert Sitton
Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film

Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film

by Robert Sitton

Hardcover

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Overview

Iris Barry (1895–1969) was a pivotal modern figure and one of the first intellectuals to treat film as an art form, appreciating its far-reaching, transformative power. Although she had the bearing of an aristocrat, she was the self-educated daughter of a brass founder and a palm-reader from the Isle of Man. An aspiring poet, Barry attracted the attention of Ezra Pound and joined a demimonde of Bloomsbury figures, including Ford Maddox Ford, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Waley, Edith Sitwell, and William Butler Yeats. She fell in love with Pound's eccentric fellow Vorticist, Wyndham Lewis, and had two children by him.

In London, Barry pursued a career as a novelist, biographer, and critic of motion pictures. In America, she joined the modernist Askew Salon, where she met Alfred Barr, director of the new Museum of Modern Art. There she founded the museum's film department and became its first curator, assuring film's critical legitimacy. She convinced powerful Hollywood figures to submit their work for exhibition, creating a new respect for film and prompting the founding of the International Federation of Film Archives.

Barry continued to augment MoMA's film library until World War II, when she joined the Office of Strategic Services to develop pro-American films with Orson Welles, Walt Disney, John Huston, and Frank Capra. Yet despite her patriotic efforts, Barry's "foreignness" and association with such filmmakers as Luis Buñuel made her the target of an anticommunist witch hunt. She eventually left for France and died in obscurity. Drawing on letters, memorabilia, and other documentary sources, Robert Sitton reconstructs Barry's phenomenal life and work while recasting the political involvement of artistic institutions in the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231165785
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 04/01/2014
Pages: 496
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Robert Sitton is adjunct professor of media and culture at Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Duke University and worked on the cultural news staff of the New York Times, as director of film education for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and, in the 1970s, developed the Northwest Film Study Center of the Portland Art Museum, fashioned after Iris Barry's collection at the Museum of Modern Art.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Alistair Cooke
Credits
Previews
1. Early Years
2. "We Enjoyed the War"
3. "Dear Miss Barry"
4. The Other Bloomsbury
5. Life with Lewis
6. Children
7. Alan Porter
8. The Spectator
9. Splashing Into Film Society
10. Cinema Paragons, Hollywood, and Lady Mary
11. Let's Go to the Pictures
12. Victory and Defeat
13. America
14. The Askew Salon
15. Museum Men
16. Remarriage
17. Settling In
18. Cracking Hollywood
19. Art High and Low
20. On to Europe
21. Going Public
22. The Slow Martyrdom of Alfred Barr
23. Meanwhile, Back at the Library
24. New Work, Old Acquaintances
25. "The Master" and His Minions
26. Temora Farm
27. The Museum Enlists
28. Mr. Rockefeller's Office
29. L'Affair Buñuel
30. The Other Library
31. Divorce
32. Postwar Blues
33. Abbott's Fall
34. Hospital
35. Departure
36. La Bonne Font
37. Things Past
38. The Austin House
39. Readjustments
40. New York and London
41. Final Breaks
42. The End
Sequel
Notes
Sources
Index

What People are Saying About This

Haidee Wasson

Sitton's book is chock full of fascinating detail and tells a compelling story about an unusual character, a woman who built institutions and contributed to a way of thinking about film that we take for granted today. It captures nicely the multiple and often overlapping spheres that Iris Barry actively participated in and ultimately shaped: literary modernism, museums, journalism, cinema, archives and governmental organizations. There is no book that weaves together the threads of her story so thoroughly. The result is also a much larger and untold history about art, film and culture.

Dana Polan

Museum of Modern Art film legend Iris Barry mattered to cinema history, and this book makes her own life matter as well. Sitton's sharp biography spans her life from her fascinating times among the literati of post-Victorian Britain to her famed career in the US which entailed her virtually founding the influential MoMA Film Library.This is a rich, captivating story that makes an original and significant contribution by giving us the development of a life in film that was so consequential for its serious study of the art. It is bound to be of interest to anyone in film study and archival work, the museum world, and the general public.

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