Mabel Dodge Luhan’s
Social Network

Part of the larger project Mabel Dodge Luhan: Musing the Avant-Garde, this network map traces social interactions between Mabel Dodge and other key avant-garde figures between the years of 1912 and 1914. Dodge held two prominent salons in New York’s Greenwich Village and in Florence, Italy. At 23 Fifth Avenue and the Villa Curonia respectively, Dodge gathered together leading painters, sculptors, authors and more. Her salons served as critical apexes of communication between artists and authors including: Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Carl Van Vechten, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and many more.

Color Key

• Mabel Dodge: Bright Orange
• Carl Van Vechten: Gray
• Gertrude Stein: Deep Purple
• Mina Loy: Deep Orange
• Neith Boyce: Light Purple

This map, produced through Gephi software, compiles data from a variety of sources to trace known moments of social connection (either in person or via letters) between such leading Avant-Garde figures. Each figure is represented by a node (a colored circle) and lines of intersection that bridge that person to individuals around him or her with whom contact was made. Larger nodes indicate greater social influence based on the sources reviewed. Such sources centered around the lives of Mabel Dodge, Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, Mina Loy, and Neith Boyce. These primary figures alone were assigned a unique color representation as indicated in the key below. You might notice, however, that the colors indicated in the key do not always correspond to the color represented in the network map. Just as two individuals influence each other once in communication, so too does Gephi blend colors each time an individual intersects with someone else to reveal the generative artistic possibilities made possible through each union.

In this brief YouTube video, I single out each of the primary nodes to make visible their specific social connections:

Blair, Sarah. “Gertrude Stein, 27 Rue de Fleurus, and the Place of the Avant-Garde.” American Literary History, vol. 12, no. 3, autumn 2000, pp. 417-437. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/490211.

Boyce, Neith. “War Diary [August 1914].” The Modern World of Neith Boyce: Autobiography and Diaries, edited by Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, University of New Mexico Press, 1872-1951, pp. 291-322.

DeBoer-Langworthy, Carol. “Introduction.” The Modern World of Neith Boyce: Autobiography and Diaries, edited by Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, University of New Mexico Press, 2003, pp. 1-41.

DeKoven, Marianne. “Doubleness and the “Origins” of the Modernist Form.” TulsaStudies in Women’s Literature, vol. 8, no. 1, spring 1989, pp. 19-42. JSTOR.https://www.jstor.org/stable/463878.

Fahlman, Betsy. “The Great Draper Woman: Muriel Draper and the Art of the Salon.” Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, autumn 2005, pp. 33-37. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3598096.

Heller, Adele and Rudnick, Lois. “Introduction.” 1915 The Cultural Moment: TheNew Politics, the New Woman, the New Psychology, the New Art, and the NewTheatre in America, edited by Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, Rutgers, 1991, pp. 1-15.

Hubly, Erlene. “Gertrude Stein.” The North American Review, vol. 271, no. 3, Sep. 1968, pp. 65-74. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25124768.

Luhan, Mabel Dodge. Intimate Memories: European Experiences. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935.

–.Intimate Memories: Movers and Shakers. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1957.

Mellow, James R. Gertrude Stein: A Charmed Circle. Praeger, 1974.

Rudnick, Lois P. “Radical Visions of Art and Self in the 20th Century: Mabel Dodge and Gertrude Stein.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, spring 1982, pp. 51-63. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.rog/stable/3194531.

Rudnick, Lois Palken. Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds. University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

Rudnick, Lois and MaLin Wilson-Powell, eds. Mabel Dodge Luhan & Company. University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

Steiglitz, Alfred. Alfred Stieglitz: Three Portraits. 1963. Beinecke Library, New Haven. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3524763. Accessed 1 Dec. 2018.

Stein, Gertrude. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten 1913-1946. Edited by Robert Burns. Columbia UP, 2013.

Stein, Gertrude and Vechten, Carl Van. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and CarlVan Vechten. Edited by Edward Burns, Columbia University Press, 1986.

Trimberger, Ellen Kay. “The New Woman and the New Sexuality: Conflict and Contradiction in the Writings and Lives of Mabel Dodge and Neith Boyce.” 1915 The Cultural Moment: The New Politics, the New Woman, the New Psychology, the New Art, and the New Theatre in America. Edited by Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, Rutgers, 1991, pp. 98-117.

Vechten, Carl Van. Sacred and Profane Memories. Alfred A Knopf, 1st edition, 1918.