Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was a key advocate for modernism across the arts in America in the first half of the twentieth century. As a critic of music, dance, and literature, as novelist, as photographer, as patron of the arts, and as saloniste, he exerted an influence on the development and reception of popular and avant-garde forms of modernism - from jazz, blues, and early cinema to Gertrude Stein and Igor Stravinsky. Though currently less...