Mabel Dodge Luhan - Infinite Women

This bio has been republished from Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde. See below for full attribution.

Born: 26 February 1879, United States
Died: 13 August 1962
Country most active: United States, Italy
Also known as: Mabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan

A wealthy American patron of the twentieth-century arts movement, Mabel Evan Dodge Sterne Luhan (Mabel Dodge) hosted modernist salons in Arcetri, Italy (outside of Florence), New York City, and Taos, New Mexico, presiding over her guests as an intellectual provocateur, a financial supporter, organizer, and creative contributor for some of the most radical figures and ideas of the early twentieth century (“Mabel Dodge”). Born Mabel Ganson in 1879 in Buffalo, New York to socially elite parents, Dodge made her “coming out” début at age eighteen (Rudnick New 234). Soon after, in an act of defiance she married Karl Evans at age 21 (234). Widowed at 23, soon after giving birth to their son, John, Dodge traveled to Paris to recover and unravel “the Victorian influences” of her lineage (234). On-board the ship, she met architect Edwin Dodge. In 1905, Mabel and Edwin married and bought the former Medician, Villa Curonia and went on to host artistic salons. Edwin enhanced the villa with architectural additions; Mabel filled it with art, artists, and gossip. Dodge served as both hostess and confidante of known modernist figures such as Carl Van Vechten, Gertrude Stein, and Mina Loy.
Dodge was both an artistic and personal confidante to Mina Loy, introducing her to the influential Futurist movement in Florence. The two met at Villa Curonia, marking the beginning of Loy’s “‘expansion’ into the circles gathered around…tolerant, unexacting, but gossipy Americans” in Florence during this time (Burke 120). Through Dodge, Loy met many artists and intellectuals, including Margret Sanger, Gertrude Stein, and Loy’s future husband, Stephen Haweis. Loy became a regular attendee of Dodge’s salons, sharing work and companionship. Dodge was an artistic muse to whom Loy felt close, and the two lovingly referred to each other by the nicknames, “Doose” (Loy) and “Moose” (Dodge) (121). The two also discussed Loy’s troubled and eventually ended marriage to Haweis in 1914, as well as Loy’s affairs with Marinetti and Papini (120). Loy often went to Dodge when she had personal or financial trouble, once stating that her friendship with Dodge served as a “great salvation” (Burke 119). Over time, the numerous social entanglements took a toll on Dodge, and led to a string of affairs and attempts at suicide.
In 1912, the Dodges moved to New York City and soon after divorced. Mabel Dodge established a new salon at 23 Fifth Avenue, in Greenwich Village, always keeping up contact with Loy through letters. In 1913, Dodge promoted the Armory Show, where Stein’s “Portrait of Mabel Dodge at Villa Curonia” was showcased. Dodge also proposed the idea for and helped organize the Patterson Strike Pageant in 1913, where she met journalist John Reed. In 1914, Loy sent a manuscript of “Feminist Manifesto” to Dodge (Beinecke). Dodge never responded to “Feminist Manifesto,” marking her silence as an indicator of her complicated perspectives on feminism. Dodge shared Sanger’s belief in a freer female sexuality, however she was known to conflate her own significance with that of the man she was married to at the time (“The Male-Identified Woman” 125).
After meeting at the Patterson Strike Pageant, Dodge and Reed became engaged in 1915. Reed then traveled to cover World War I, wherein Dodge had an affair with sculptor and painter Maurice Sterne. Upon Reed’s return, Dodge offered him a bedroom and writing studio in Sterne’s home, effectively ending their engagement (Luhan 105). She married Sterne in 1917. Briefly after their honeymoon, Dodge accused Sterne of looking at other women and sent him to New Mexico. Sterne soon asked Dodge to meet him in Taos, New Mexico to “save the Indians, their art—their culture—reveal it to the world!” (qtd. in Luhan 142). Dodge moved to Taos but divorced Sterne in 1922 and married Antonio (Tony) Luhan, a Pueblo native to Taos, in 1923.
Dodge’s last salon, the Taos art colony, included D.H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, Willa Cather and Ansel Adams (Barolini). As an artistic member of this salon, Dodge wrote three works of prose documenting her life in Taos: Lorenzo in Taos (1932) about Lawrence, Winter in Taos (1935), and Taos and its Artists (1947). In the 1940s, Dodge completed a four-volume memoir, finally turning her life into her own art. She stayed in Taos, married to Tony Luhan, until she died of a heart attack in 1962.