Last year, as I was turning 29, I picked up a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford. Zelda was a tragic, talented, and complex woman and a person that I knew very little about. So, I spent some time getting to know Zelda Fitzgerald. I found myself drawn into the life of a charismatic and artistic girl. She grows and changes, becomes a mother, a writer, a late-in-life ballet dancer. She suffers from and within mental and marital struggles. I was engrossed.

In one letter to F. Scott, she asks him, "Do you still smell of pencils and sometimes tweed?" The phrase itself has lingered in my memory. To be able to ask something so personal and at the same moment removed, perfectly underlies the push and pull between the two figures. It is a question that is charmingly heartbreaking and innocently vicious. (*I plan on lettering this sentence at some point in the not-too-distant future.)

In the spirit of this new tradition, I wanted to again do a birthday read of a biography of a female artist. I'm not sure why it feels important to me that they are women, but for now it does. After reading about Arthur Lubow's biography of Diane Arbus in the New Yorker, and coinciding with an exhibit at the Met Breuer, Diane Arbus unwittingly became the usherette to my thirtieth year. I am not an expert on the art of photography, but I know that I love the work of Diane Arbus. She is able to honestly capture not just a person, but the shadow of her own presence in the room or relationship.

I'm not sure what I am looking for with these books. It feels reassuring to spend time with the artists and it has affected my understanding of their work. Looking at their work has the familiar calm of an old friendship, but I can't help but wonder if I spend too much time looking for myself in them. These women have influence, and they grappled with the control of it. These artists struggled within themselves and used that struggle outside of themselves.

Have a biography to recommend? Please, send me an email: beth@politetype.com