Annalyn Swan

Biographer

• Born: 1951

Contribution: Annalyn Swan is a biographer and critic best known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning collaborative work with Mark Stevens, De Kooning: An American Master (2004).

Background

Annalyn Swan was born in 1951 and grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi. Her parents were George A. Swan and Ethelyn Cooper Swan. After graduating from Biloxi High School, Swan attended Loyola University in New Orleans from 1969 to 1970. While studying there, she became the news editor of the university’s newspaper, the Maroon; one of her colleagues at the paper was Bob Marshall, who would become another Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. At the end of her freshman year, Swan transferred from Loyola to Princeton University. After graduating in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in English, she traveled to England, where she pursued a graduate degree at King’s College, Cambridge, on a Marshall Fellowship.

When she returned to the United States, Swan held several positions as writer, editor, critic, and contributor for a number of major media publications. She began her career as a writer for Time magazine and later joined Newsweek as a music critic, eventually rising to the position of senior arts critic there. In 1986, she was tapped to serve as editor in chief of Savvy, a women’s business magazine. She also contributed to the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker, among other publications. She has received a number of awards for her journalism and review pieces, including the Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York.

Career

Swan later returned to academia, teaching at her alma mater, Princeton, as well as serving as a trustee for the university. She also began work on what would become her best-known work: a collaborative research project with her husband, Mark Stevens, on the life and works of artist Willem de Kooning. The project would take almost a decade to complete. Following the critical success of the de Kooning biography, Swan worked with other authors, including Stevens, on a number of other books. Among these books were All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make—and Spend—Their Fortunes (2007), a book about the lifestyles and expenses of executives of major corporations, and Secrets of the Da Vinci Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Bestselling Novel (2004), a critical analysis of the popular 2003 Dan Brown thriller.

Swan and Stevens took a great interest in breaking down one of the most successful and highly complex artists of the twentieth century. Willem de Kooning (1904–97) created giant works that feature bold brush strokes, although he was known to switch styles frequently. De Kooning was given greater scrutiny in light of his relationships with women; the number of women with whom he reportedly had liaisons, along with his frequent depictions of women with large eyes and twisted features, has led many critics to label de Kooning a misogynist.

For their book, Swan and Stevens examined previously unseen letters and documents and reviewed a large number of interviews with the Dutch-born artist, combing every available avenue to compile a more comprehensive portrait of de Kooning. Their first-of-a-kind biography of this artist casts light on his early life, from his impoverished and abusive childhood home to his arrival in New York in 1926 and his mural work during the Great Depression. Swan and Stevens also chronicle his relationships with fellow bohemian artists during the 1930s and 1940s, his emergence as a critically acclaimed artist and continued success, his consequent alcoholism, and his final battle with dementia in the 1980s and 1990s.

De Kooning: An American Master was hailed for its careful examination of de Kooning’s life. The book casts a more complete light on the artist than has previously been seen. Because of these accomplishments, Swan and Stevens received the Pulitzer Prize in the biography or autobiography category in 2005. Three years later, Swan and Stevens applied for and won a grant to research a biography of English painter Francis Bacon, another complex figure whose rise to prominence in Britain paralleled that of de Kooning in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The couple published the book, Francis Bacon: Revelations, in 2021.

After leaving Princeton, Swan moved to the City University of New York where she taught the biography and memoir master of arts program.

Impact

Willem de Kooning was a revolutionary artist, helping to lead the twentieth-century American movement in abstract expressionism. However, de Kooning’s personal life lent a more controversial element to the artist’s life. Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens’s seminal work De Kooning: An American Master is therefore significant for its careful and comprehensive examination of this important figure in the history of modern art.

Personal Life

Annalyn Swan lives in New York City with her husband and literary collaborator, Mark Stevens.

Bibliography

"Annalyn Swan." City University of New York, 2024, www.gc.cuny.edu/people/annalyn-swan. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Bellande, Ray L. “21st Century.” Biloxi Historical Society. Ray L. Bellande and Biloxi Archives, 2013. Web. 19 July 2013.

Cohen, David. “A Life of Exhilarated Despair.” Rev. of De Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. Art Critical, 15 Dec. 2004, artcritical.com/2004/12/15/de-kooning-an-american-master-by-mark-stevens-annalyn-swan/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Stevens, Mark. “Why de Kooning Matters.” Interview by Jerry Saltz. New York Magazine. New York Media, 21 Aug. 2011. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Swan, Annalyn, and Mark Stevens. “De Kooning: An American Master.” Interview by Liane Hansen. NPR, 19 Dec. 2004, www.wamc.org/2004-12-19/de-kooning-an-american-master. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.