Transnational Perspectives on Artists' Lives

'This impressively varied and highly accessible book is characterized by an open and inclusive attitude towards the subjects it covers. Its innovative transnationalist perspective facilitates interaction between fields that really ought to communicate more. Refreshingly, it takes "fictional" life writing seriously as contributing to the shaping of the afterlives of artists. There may not be one way of "doing" biography, but, surely, this is the best way of doing biography research.'

• Dr Dennis Kersten, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Radboud University, The Netherlands

This book demonstrates the significance of transnationality for studying and writing the lives of artists. While painters, musicians and writers have long been cast as symbols of their associated nations, recent research is increasingly drawing attention to those aspects of their lives and works that resist or challenge the national framework. The volume showcases different ways of treating transnationality in life writing by and about artists, investigating how the transnational can offer intriguing new insights on artists who straddle different nations and cultures. It further explores ways of adopting transnational perspectives in artists' biographies in order to deal with experiences of cultural otherness or international influences, as well as analysing cross-cultural representations of artists in biography and biofiction. Gathering together insights from biographers and scholars with expertise in literature, music and the visual arts, Transnational Perspectives on Artists' Lives opens up rich avenues for researching transnationality in the cultural domain at large.

Autorentext

Marleen Rensen is Senior Lecturer in Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, and co-edited and introduced the special collection Life Writing and European Identities (2019) and the volume Unhinging the National **Framework: Perspectives on Transnational Life Writing (2020).

Christopher Wiley is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey, UK. He is the author of many journal articles and book chapters, and the co-editor of volumes including Researching and Writing on Contemporary Art and Artist*s (2020), *Writing About Contemporary Musicians (2020) and The Routledge **Companion to Autoethnography and Self-Reflexivity in Music Studies (2021).

Zusammenfassung

This book demonstrates the significance of transnationality for studying and writing the lives of artists. While painters, musicians and writers have long been cast as symbols of their associated nations, recent research is increasingly drawing attention to those aspects of their lives and works that resist or challenge the national framework. The volume showcases different ways of treating transnationality in life writing by and about artists, investigating how the transnational can offer intriguing new insights on artists who straddle different nations and cultures. It further explores ways of adopting transnational perspectives in artists' biographies in order to deal with experiences of cultural otherness or international influences, and analyses cross-cultural representations of artists in biography and biofiction. Gathering together insights from biographers and scholars with expertise in literature, music and the visual arts, Transnational Perspectives on Artists' Lives opens up rich avenues for researching transnationality in the cultural domain at large.

Inhalt

1. 'Writing Artists' Lives Across Nations and Cultures: Biography, Biofiction and Transnationality; Marleen Rensen and Christopher Wiley.- 2. The Transnational Aspect in Harold Nicolson's The Development of English Biography; Maryam Thirriard.- 3. Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky: A Reassessment of Transnational Identities and Abstraction through Biography; Suzanne Bode.- 4. Frances Hodgkins: A Twentieth-Century Modernist Painter Torn Between Nations; Samantha Niederman.- 5. No use calling yourself South African. South African is nothing: Understanding and exploring the concept of place and nationhood in the life and music of Christopher James; Marc Röntsch.- 6. The Spanish Translations of Richmal Crompton's Just William stories; Jane McVeigh.- 7. Alienation and Intimacy: Transnational Writing on Julia Margaret Cameron; Tamar Hager.- 8. A Hungarian Woman Writer's Transnational Afterlife in the Digital Era: Renée Erds (18791956); Anna Menyhért.- 9. "Something out of the way": Edmund Gosse's biography of Henrik Ibsen; Suze van der Poll.- 10. Chopin on the Dneiper: The Musician-Poet and Boris Pasternak's Search for the Transnational; Maria Razumovskaya.- 11. All the nuances of his predicament: Caryl Phillips on James Baldwin; Josiane Ranguin.- 12. Vie* *de Paula Modersohn Becker by Marie Darrieussecq: BetweenPortrait and Self-Portrait; Manet van Montfrans.- 13. Don't tell anyone: K. Schippers's novelist reflections on life-writing and transnationality; Sander Bax.- 14. The Hours and the Nations: Virginia Woolf's Life and Art in Michael Cunningham's America; Maximiliano Jiménez.- 15. Ethel Smyth as the composer Edith Staines in E.F. Benson's Dodo trilogy; Christopher Wiley.