Rosamond Bernier has lived an unusually full life—remarkable for its vividness and diversity of experience—and she has known many (one is tempted to say all) of the greatest artists and composers of the twentieth century.
In Some of My Lives, Bernier has made a kind of literary scrapbook from an extraordinary array of writings, ranging from diary entries to her many contributions to the art journal L’OEIL, which she cofounded in 1955. The result is a multifaceted self-portrait of a life informed and surrounded by the arts.
Through the stories of her encounters with some of the twentieth century’s great artists and composers—including Pablo Picasso, Leonard Bernstein, Max Ernst, Aaron Copeland, Malcolm Lowry, and Karl Lagerfeld—we come to understand the sheer richness of Bernier’s experiences, interactions, and memories. The result is pithy, hilarious, and wise—a richly rewarding chronicle of many lives fully lived.
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“In Paris, she had Picasso’s ear, and Matisse’s, too. Back when blue laws shut Philadelphia down on Sundays, Stokowski came over to her house for dinner. Her long marriage to the art critic John Russell counts as one of the great love stories of our era. Rosamond Bernier, storyteller extraordinaire, friend and confidante to countless of the twentieth century’s cultural icons, has written a remarkable memoir of a remarkable life. Intimate, winning, sunny, and smart, Some of My Lives has a voice not unlike the one in Diana Vreeland’s autobiography—only here, all of it is true.” —Michael Kimmelman
“Wonders never cease in the life of Rosamond Bernier. As the Paris-based European editor of Vogue, she saw the world through the chiffon trenches of haute couture. As the cofounding editor of L’OEIL, the most influential art magazine of her time, she befriended artists like Picasso, Miró, and Matisse (who suggested she wear a yellow scarf with her orange Balenciaga coat). Some of My Lives is a delicious mosaic of a life elegantly, enchantingly lived.” —André Leon Talley
“Rosamond Bernier’s new memoir moves with the unflagging brio, wit, and style of her public lectures and her private conversation. The effect is pure pleasure—a brilliant life, beautifully evoked.” —Calvin Tomkins
“Rosamond Bernier’s gorgeous ‘scrapbook’ of a memoir is an exhilarating hopscotch through twentieth-century art that had me careening from the middle to the beginning to the back, delighting in her encounters with everyone who mattered. Bernier makes me believe in string theory. She just might be the unifying force behind everything.” —John Guare
About the Author
Rosamond Bernier was born in Philadelphia and was educated in France, England, and America. In 1955, she cofounded the influential art magazine L'OEIL, which featured the works of the masters of the School of Paris. A renowned lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rosamond Bernier was named for life to the International Best-Dressed List.
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Ms. Bernier was fortunate enough to be born the daughter of the chairman of the Philadelphia Symphony and as a result met many of the world's leading musicians while growing up. Being attractive, intelligent and apparently very charming, men tended to give her particular attention and that included very famous men. These personal characteristics served her well throughout her adult life and when she moved to Mexico with her first husband in the late '30s, she seemingly inevitably fell into a circle with Frida and Diego Rivera and anyone else of interest in the country at the time. From there to Paris after the war where she casually mentions that Vogue wanted her to write features for them "a position for which I had absolutely no qualifications beyond curiosity". Somehow, the fact that she knew Alice B. Toklas, Madame Gres and Christian Dior probably helped. In her role at Vogue, she met Picasso, Chanel, Matisse, Le Corbusier and everyone else in the field of arts and design in the decades after the war.
She started her own arts magazine in Paris, L'Oeil, and as a result she not just wrote about, but became friends with Giacometti, Henry Moore, Miro, Goncharova, Wilfredo Lam among other great artists of the last century. This was the material which made her lecture series in New York instant sellouts. And now she is sharing her stories about these figures with us.
When she wed critic John Russell in 1974 at Philip Johnson's Glass House, she was "given away" by Aaron Copland with Andy Warhol, Stephen Spender, Johnson, and Leonard Bernstein among those in attendance. Later she sat for portraits by David Hockney and Alex Katz.
This is a woman with many stories to tell and she does so in an anecdotal style which allows you to pick up the book, read a chapter or three and then put the book down to return later without losing any continuity. I found it both interesting and fun.
The book was a bit dated for the average reader out there.
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