Some of My Lives:
A Scrapbook Memoir
by Rosamond BernierFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
"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. Rosamond Bernier makes me believe in string theory. She just might be the unifying force behind everything."
- John Guare
"In Paris, she had Picasso's ear and Matisse's, too. Back when blue laws shut Philadelphia down on Sundays, Stokowski often came to dinner. Her long marriage to the art critic John Russell counts as one of the great love stories of our era. Rosamond Bernier, story-teller 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 Paris-based European editor of VOGUE, she saw the world through the chiffon trenches of haute couture. As founding editor of L'OEIL, the most influential art magazine of her time, she befriended artists Picasso, Miró, Matisse (who suggested she wear a yellow scarf with her orange Balenciaga coat). This is a delicious mosaic of a life elegantly, enchantingly lived."
- André Leon Talley
Available on Amazon.com.
Reviews of Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir
From the publisher:
Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir is an informal story of an unusually full life, remarkable for its vividness and diversity of experience.
Rosamond Bernier's memoirs span several continents, beginning in the United States, in Philadelphia, continuing to Mexico and then on to France, where she lived for several decades in Paris running the art review she co-founded, L'OEIL, and finally returning to the United States where she became renowned as a lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and all over the country.
Through Rosamond Bernier's stories of her encounters with some of the twentieth century's great artists and musicians — including Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Max Ernst, Louise Bourgeois, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Simon Rattle, and colorful individuals such as Malcolm Lowery and Karl Lagerfeld — we come to understand the sheer richness of her experiences, interactions and memories.
The result is a multi-faceted self-portrait of a life informed and surrounded by the arts. It is pithy, hilarious, and wise — a rewarding chronicle of many lives fully lived.
Available on Amazon.com.
Matisse, Picasso and Miró:
As I Knew Them
by Rosamond BernierAlfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1991
Notable Books of the Year 1991:
"expertly edited and beautifully illustrated"
-The New York Times
Available on Amazon.com.
From Publishers Weekly:
Bernier, an American, arrived in Paris in 1947 and spent more than 20 years there. Founder of the art journal L'Oeil , which she edited until 1969, she was a friend and associate of many famous artists, including the trio profiled in this snazzily illustrated book, replete with 350 reproductions and photographs (200 in color), and based on her lectures at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In southern France she met Matisse, "a benign figure of Edwardian elegance," a world traveler who "made everywhere work for him," whether he was in Morocco, Tahiti, Saint Tropez or Spain. She limns Picasso as a man of multiple selves, "Prince Charming and Jack the Ripper" all in one. In Barcelona she befriended Miró, seen here as a dark surrealist visionary "eaten alive by his visions," rather than the purveyor of gentle whimsy beloved of the public. Bernier's enchanting reminiscences are rich in anecdote and insight.
From Library Journal:
Bernier's reminiscences of her friendship with three of this century's most revered artists provides insight into their work and entertaining stories of their character. In a breezy tone that makes reading a pleasure, she reveals Picasso's love of disguises (he painted himself in various costumes and was fascinated by a ten-gallon hat given him by Gary Cooper); Matisse's incessant cursing while he worked and his painstaking planning of the Venice Chapel; and Miro's visit with the Calders to a dance hall in Harlem. The book is based on a series of successful museum lectures seen recently on PBS.
Available on Amazon.com.