Another Master

A review of the Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir

When we discover that our icons conduct their daily affairs and relationships with the same contradictions and messy abandon that we lesser mortals do, there is not the relief that we are all the same, but rather the disillusionment that even our idols make mistakes. This was my reaction after reading Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography The Prime of Life.

The Prime of Life is the second installment of de Beauvoir’s series of autobiographies. This volume begins in 1929, with the 21-year-old de Beauvoir freshly graduated from the University of Paris. She had already established her lifelong association with Sartre and moved out of her parents’ house. She rented a room from her grandmother in the city of Paris, where she finally felt freedom from the constraints of her immediate family. This arrangement did not entirely sever her family ties, but her grandmother allowed her the independence to come and go freely. That there would be an understanding of propriety and a level of reportage from the grandmother to de Beauvoir’s parents should her behavior warrant it was assumed. Still, de Beauvoir felt independent and took full advantage of the lack of obvious constraints.

Having graduated and taken the teaching exams at university, she secured a part time position at Lycée Victor Durvy and supplemented her income with some private tutoring. This light working schedule gave her much time to explore Paris and its pleasures as well as reestablish her association with Sartre. And it was Sartre to whom she was most excited to spend her time. It should be explained that de Beauvoir wrote about meeting Sartre in university in her first memoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. One of the difficulties of reading The Prime of Life is de Beauvoir structured her memoirs with the intention that the reader would read them all in order. Therefore, she does not summarize or repeat information that was presented in previous volumes. This can cause confusion for those who attempt to read her memoirs as stand-alone works.

De Beauvoir encountered Sartre at university when they were both taking their final exams. She had been introduced to Sartre by a mutual friend. After hearing Sartre’s own philosophical rejection of the bourgeois, she believed that she had found an intellectual match who shared her devotion to freedom. Sartre was not immune to de Beauvoir’s attractiveness. He also found in her a peer who shared his philosophy. He understood that she equaled his intellectual brilliance; however, he was also quick to tell her she needed coaching. They each considered the other as a true soul connection in terms of an essential love rather than something determined by fate. Essential love was a term that Satre coined for the benefit of de Beauvoir. By naming Simone and his relationship with her as essential, he was convincing her that they had a special, unbreakable bond. As he explained, this did not exclude the exploration of other romantic interests for either of them, since they retained their independence and were thwarting the bourgeoisie. Sartre called these extraneous liaisons “contingent.”

De Beauvoir’s rejection of the French bourgeois society she was born into had its roots in her family’s financial failings. Her family had lost their fortune during WWI when the grandfather’s bank collapsed due to bad speculations and the fraud to cover them up. This resulted not only in financial ruin for the family, but also in a social scandal that would follow the various members of the family for years. Trying to regain their financial status resulted in a further series of failed investments all of which reduced Simone’s family to genteel poverty. While they might claim their inherited bourgeois social position, they could not provide the dowery necessary for Simone to marry within her station. Instead, she was encouraged by her father to pursue an education that would provide Simone with the means to find work and become self-sufficient. This further alienated her from early twentieth century French society, since a working woman was viewed as unseemly and a violation of the social code adhered to by the bourgeois. This antiquated social expectation de Beauvoir’s was born into, expected an eligible woman to be educated in the social graces and home management, not to attend university and seek employment to earn their living. Simone decided to reject the constraints of the bourgeois in defiance of a social code she could not be part of and was rejecting her. She was reaffirmed in her repudiation of the bourgeois by the plight of her friend Zaza. Zaza was being compelled into a union that was profitable for her family but repugnant to her. Before this alliance could be legalized, she fell ill with viral encephalitis and died at 21. De Beauvoir blamed the psychological stress for her friend’s fatal illness and was convinced that bourgeois society was a murderous engine of conformity designed to constrain a women’s freedom.

After having been found and chosen by Sartre, de Beauvoir abandoned her cherished independence and freedom by allowing Sartre to dictate the parameters of their relationship. In effect, she trades the misogyny of her father and the restrictions of bourgeois society for the misogyny and restrictions of Sartre. It was Sartre who decided that they would never marry. Instead, that they would enjoy “contingent” loves, and that they would continue to spurn the bourgeois that turned their backs on them. This all seems suspiciously self-serving for Sartre. Sartre lost nothing in this arrangement. As a man, with greater freedom of choice, his status and social standing would not be affected. De Beauvoir was well aware that she was the one who would suffer the most from Sartre’s pact. She endeavored to explain the inequities of Sartre’s plan, but he rejected her rationalizations as dated and cowardly. De Beauvoir accepted Sartre’s terms for a relationship not only because she viewed him as the intellectual superior but because it aligned with her desire to escape the constraints of the bourgeois. She bought into his concept of perfect freedom regardless of the glaring flaws because it defined an ideal she hoped for. Still, de Beauvoir’s acceptance of Sartre’s dictum seems out of character for a woman who advocated for the disassembling of a similar traditional chauvinistic bias and envisioned a new radical future for women. Yet yielding to his authority by allowing him to dictate the rules of their association would serve her future in other ways.

This is what makes the reading of The Prime of Life so infuriating. Through de Beauvoir’s own telling, she, time after time acquiesces to the will of Sartre even when she internally questions his authority. She relates a conversation they had regarding the existence of microorganisms. Sarte argued vigorously against the actuality of a microscopic world that had the ability to affect human life. Sartre’s premise was that something cannot truly exist unless it is directly perceived and given meaning by human consciousness. De Beauvoir tolerated these wild counter scientific arguments of Sartre’s as part of his cognitive machinery. She rationalized that they allowed for his greater and broader theories of human freedom.

De Beauvoir’s acceptance of his arguments seemed more than likely a way to avoid opposing Sartre, risking alienation, and losing access to his self-declared golden brain. De Beauvoir gained world-renowned status being the companion to the individual who was considered the greatest genius in mid-century France. Her pride in his designation and her need to retain her secondary position at his side becomes more obvious as the book goes on. De Beauvoir knew that as a woman navigating a deeply sexist society, she would face an impossible uphill battle against closed patriarchal institutions trying to access the global intellectual mainstream entirely on her own. By anchoring her life to Sartre, she gained immediate entry into the absolute vanguard of cultural, political, and literary life.

Sartre decided for de Beauvoir that she must become a writer. De Beauvoir had youthful ideas about becoming an author, but she described herself as too indolent (page 52, Prime of Life). When faced with the blank page, she found nothing worthwhile to say and little motivation. She was indifferent to writing about the past because there was no reason to relive it. With these rationalizations against writing, she decided silence was best. Except Sartre had no tolerance for idleness, a condition he relegated to the bourgeois. He ordered de Beauvoir to write because she needed to open her eyes to the manifest glories of life. Under his directive she did.

Her approach to writing her autobiography was phenomenological. Taking her instruction from Sartre’s existentialism lexicon, she presented her life through her actual, sensory lived experiences. Her aim was to capture the exact feeling of her existence as she had lived it. She was determined not to present herself in a stereotypical feminine way which she perceived as emotional and romantic. As a result, The Prime of Life is dense with detail. Using her diaries as source material, de Beauvoir describes the minutia of all her experiences, from the clothing her companions wore, to the decorations in the café’s she frequented, to the practically word for word retelling of various conversations she was part of. This insistence on her philosophy of the self as something chosen and constructed, becomes a test of endurance for the reader.

In the Introduction de Beauvoir explains that she will not attempt to explain or justify Sartre’s philosophy because only he can discuss his ideas with any authority. Then continuously throughout her book, she does exactly that; she explains and rationalizes Sartre’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to justify her decisions to follow his lead and his orders. She tries heroically to convince her readers that she is maintaining her autonomy and is freeing herself from the constraints of her bourgeois upbringing by her association with someone whose star she believes is on the ascendent. Sartre’s star is on the ascendent, but he needs someone to do his unpleasant, tedious tasks for him – including finding him nubile women for intimate assignations as part of his idea of contingent relationships. Through her teaching, de Beauvoir had access to young women. If de Beauvoir discussed one she found interesting with Sartre, he would, under the guise of psychological material to be analyzed, encourage de Beauvoir to allow him to meet her and have them join and form a trio. If she hesitated, he would weaponize Simone’s jealousy as the enemy of freedom. And for her troubles she permanently lost her teaching license.

The Prime of Life is enlightening not for the window into the life of the youthful de Beauvoir starting out on her journey as the premier feminist of her age, but of a young woman who becomes infatuated with a charismatic young man and decides that he is who she will align herself with despite his problematic personality. It offers an account of an intelligent, educated woman who trades the very independence she decided was her right and hands it over to a man. Perhaps she would not be the immortal we now know if she had not, but regardless of her lengthy and verbose rationalizations, she compromised her own freedom to be in that place beside the towering Sartre. To be the second most admired intellectual in France was an achievement that de Beauvoir was proud to have accomplished.

Jean-Paul Sartre (left), Simone de Beauvoir (right)

Arthur Bruso © 2026

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Personal Space

Photo book Personal Space

When we realize how

much of us is spent

in rush hour subways

underground

no real exit

it will matter less

what token we pay

for change.

—Audre Lorde

excerpt from “One Year to Life On The Grand Central Shuttle”

I exposed the film that comprises the images for the two bodies of work, Personal Space and Waiting Room, while I was attending graduate school in Philadelphia. My intention was to capture images that I would later translate into paintings. That was the way I worked at that time – to use my own photography as reference material for my large-scale graphite drawings or oil paintings.

The series Personal Space evolved out of one of the rolls of film I exposed while casually wandering around Philadelphia’s Center City on a cloudy afternoon. My intention was to photograph random people on the street. That afternoon I succeeded in capturing a couple of recognizable eccentrics. The man who was always seen carrying a tall pole, I knew him as a character who frequented the gay bars of Center City. He would regale the patrons who were willing to listen that he was a griot, and his staff was a symbol of his authority, superiority, and a connection to his spirit ancestors. More pragmatically, he probably used it for protection on his wanderings as well. For a few drinks and usually a fee, he could be convinced to accompany a captivated patron home, making it clear that he was not gay. His fit physique, pleasant looks, and curly hair had many men willing to risk the possibility of harm given his irrational character and the threating look of his stick. I captured him with his omnipresent griot staff swaggering through Penn Square.

I photographed the denizen who had been eternally banned from every gay bar in Center City because of his anti-social behavior (stealing money off the bar and drinking unattended drinks) presumably stemming from his precarious indigent situation. He eyed me and my camera warily, as he passed in front of the notorious Annex Pub. The Annex Pub was a Center City gay dive bar originally located near the Bus Depot. It was eventually demolished to make way for the urban renewal project that became Reading Terminal Market.

While photographing a street vendor couple, I also inadvertently recorded a world-weary bank customer inside a Continental Bank. Her expression could be interpreted as defeat or resolution. Its ambiguity inferred a story of pathos that could only be guessed at.

These were highlights from that afternoon’s roll of film. The characters I mentioned I singled out because something in their locations and personas implied a compelling narrative. Ultimately, these narrative insinuations did not translate into any visually compelling imagery in the photographs. At the time, I was accessing them as subjects for paintings. What I saw on film did not look strong or interesting enough to stand up to the exploratory demands of a painting. The light was grey and flat; the compositions were repetitive and constrained by the mechanical geometry of the urban architecture. My work at the time had been portraiture and very character driven. While I had captured a few interesting people, their faces were too murky and distant to allow the individuation of their features. The figures looked insignificant in the overwhelming urban concrete surrounding them, none of which added to the composition or their story. I put the film aside.

The images that eventually resulted in Waiting Room, also began as studies for paintings. What initially caught my attention to photograph were the compositional possibilities of the blue safety line painted on the glass walls of the bus shelters. I was interested in the way this graphic element not only bisected the image, but it also created a definite foreground/background in the space – a definitive plane in front of the glass, and a separate space behind the glass even though there was only a half inch of transparency between.

As I further explored the bus shelter idea, I became fascinated by the reflections on the glass walls, which often obscured the figures inside. I was so engrossed photographing this optical phenomenon that I consumed more film than I had intended.

After the images were developed, I was again disappointed with the results. I believed that I hadn’t managed to imbue the subject of reflections with anything exciting or personal. The images looked flat and textureless. I didn’t see personality in the people or a narrative in the figures. I wondered, could I bring more interest into them as paintings, or was the intentionality of purpose just not there? I stored these images away as well.

Back when these photographs were taken, I never considered that my photography was a medium unto itself. I was taking photographs for the express purpose of using them as resources for paintings. Photorealistic painting and large-scale objective drawings had been my goal as an artist since I decided to be an artist. My photographs had a subordinate function, to serve as primary sketches, not as complete artworks.

As my art and my life evolved, I was exposed to increasingly progressive influences in art. Seeing how other artists explored photography as an expressive medium brought about an abrupt change in my creative direction. I wanted to explore photography as more than source material for other projects. I came to the evident realization that I had a considerable back catalog of images that I could be exploring as photographically based ideas. Much of this came about by discovering the photographic work of David Wojonarowitz.

Wojonarowitz’ photography attracted my interest because he devised his own vision and style that avoided any of the photographic rules or techniques that I had learned were gospel in my college classes. He did not use expensive equipment. He used the flash that came as part of the camera. He was mainly interested in the final image, not the process. He ignored traditional photography’s keen attention to lighting effects and tonality. Much of his work did not employ sophisticated darkroom techniques. His photographs were spontaneous, personal, often muddy and grainy. His composition was idiosyncratic. What fascinated me most was his grouping of images together that form a cohesion that would not have been readily apparent without his intervention. As a group, the images he chose formed their own cumulative meaning beyond what each individual image depicted. This image building resonated with me as I looked to find a different way of engaging with my own photographs.

Through Wojonarowitz and other photographic influences, I began to mine my historical photographic archives for images that I could modify, adjust or repeat to fit my newly forming ideas. Putting images together soon became a new language where an image used in one context, found a different meaning in a separate work. Juxtaposing and switching images became like sentence building with the photographs as different phrases. I set aside the constraints of my photographic training which had been about the search for the perfect negative and subsequent print. I never had the patient perfectionism for darkroom. For me, the quality of the print was secondary to the image. I saw this correlation in Wojnarowicz. Under his influence, I felt free to explore photography in a way that made sense to my evolving vision. I could now see success where I had been told or believed there was failure.

This was how I reapproached the two series of photographs that became Personal Space and Waiting Room. I was attracted to something redeeming in the structure of the street photographs, and in the compositional aspect of the bus shelters. I concentrated on the important situational aspects of the images and began by breaking down what that looked like. Through this process something more engaging was revealed.

In each of the images that became Personal Space, I looked at what made the image unique because of its particular location. That would include the figures, the street furniture, and the architecture surrounding them. By isolating certain elements of the photograph and adjusting the heights and width of the resulting rectangles, a rhythm was created that had been latent within the original image. I also realized that I had not only exposed a visual movement that shifted the eye through the image, I had also exposed the social phenomenon of detachment in public spaces – how we surround ourselves in our own sequestered private bubble.

Each of us, as we traverse and occupy public space, is at once part of the urban community but we are also living our separate lives. Some individuals may reveal a glimpse of their personal stories, like the man with the staff, or the man passing in front of the Annex Pub. Perhaps because I knew something of their history, I had the hope that this knowledge would influence or add to the fleeting glimpses I had captured of their transitory passing by. The anonymous others had their lives to live as well, but their stories I could only guess at. In that moment in which I photographed them, the outside observer has only a moment to imagine their fleeting identities in the context of the image. We can perhaps project where they are headed and something of who they are, but that would be a story we create.

The second series, Waiting Room, presented a different challenge. The whole of the series subject matter; the graphic stagnation of the rectangular structure and the reflections on the glass, had also been a painting idea about composition and light. I needed a new interpretation that exploited their photographic origins. I noticed that most included figures, some that were inside the bus shelter, while others stood away, outside of the shelter. By using the edge of the structure as a guide, I separated what was outside from what was inside – even if that meant cutting a figure apart. This small separation of inside from outside heighted the spatial dynamic. By creating that small gap of white space between interior and exterior, each area was given its own focus, while the eye continued to perceive a relationship between the now two separate images. This visual antiphony set up a movement that energized the spatiality and the language of the image.

That small interruption within the image of the bus shelters, changes our perception on space and the social dynamic of waiting. It reveals our collective system of isolationism – the amount of distance we need apart from strangers to feel comfortable. Even when the outside space was empty of figures, the enclosed area of the shelter defined itself as a place of refuge, while the outside remained a place of vulnerability. This isolating of distinct areas of the image became a study in human spatial dynamics.

By breaking apart the image, I was able to represent the personal rational of how people relate in an urban environment among the buildings and sedentary objects on the street, and to explore the dynamics of securing one’s own place in the hierarchy of waiting. The lack of, or excess of, space effects the way each of us responds to our surroundings. We protect our autonomy as we trek to our obligatory destinations, then keep our own counsel as we restively make our journey home. There is rarely magic in the serendipitous encounter with our fellow travelers despite numerous stories to the contrary. There is just the overwhelming push to reach our final destination of security and comfort. To return to the sanctuary of the private lives we left behind. ◆

Personal Space

Personal Space – No. 4 – Annex Pub Unwelcome; digital photograph

Personal Space – No. 5 – Headed Home; digital photograph

Personal Space – No. No. 7 – Urban Griot; digital photograph

Waiting Room

Waiting Room – No. 5 – Pink, White Orange; digital photograph

Waiting Room – No. 10 – Apart; digital photograph

Waiting Room – No. 12 – Yellow; digital photograph

Images in the series "Waiting Room" were selected for a New Jersey State Council on the Arts fellowship.

Purchase Personal Space here.

Arthur Bruso

© 2026 Curious Matter and Arthur Bruso

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Ordinary Work

The Curious Matter Holiday Installation

December 24, 2025 - January 31, 2026

“I knew nothing; I was nothing. For this reason, I was chosen.”  — St. Catherine Labouré

The days are short, the dark settles early. Each winter, our annual holiday installation engages a visual and narrative language that is foundational to us: the imagery and lessons of the Roman Catholic Church. While the ideas we explore are broadly human and widely shared, the language through which they are expressed is culturally specific, shaped by devotion, ritual, and tradition. Our project is offered as a celebration of light, undertaken with full awareness of the Church’s long history of institutional failure — harms and exclusions that have counted us among the ostracized. This reality cannot be set aside. Still, we remain attentive to the images, stories, and ethical aspirations that endure beyond the institution’s authority. Ideals of justice, care, humility, and grace, however imperfectly held, continue to shape our moral imagination.

This year’s installation turns toward the story of St. Catherine Labouré.

Catherine was not distinguished by talent or ambition. Born into a farming family, she was dutiful and accustomed to work that went largely unnoticed. After the death of her mother, she assumed domestic responsibilities at home, and later entered the Sisters of Charity as a novice at the age of twenty-four. Her days were filled with routine tasks: kitchen work, tending animals, maintaining the ordinary rhythms of convent life. She did not seek attention, nor did she imagine herself marked for anything extraordinary.

It was from within this unremarkable life that Catherine experienced a series of visions in 1830. In the first, she was awakened in her cell by a luminous child who led her to the cloister chapel. Though locked for the night, the doors opened easily. Inside, the chapel appeared brightly lit, as if prepared for a Midnight Mass. Seated in the Spiritual Director’s chair was the Virgin Mary, whom Catherine later described as “the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” She knelt beside her and rested her hands in Mary’s lap, experiencing the warmth and solidity of her body. Mary spoke to Catherine of suffering and upheaval to come, and told her that God wished to entrust her with a mission.

In subsequent visitations, that mission was revealed. Catherine was to act as an intercessor, and to have a medal produced according to a design Mary showed her. In this image, Mary stands upon a globe, crushing a serpent beneath her feet. Rays of light stream from her open hands, extending toward the world below — signs of grace offered to those who ask for it. Encircling the figure are the words: O Mary, Conceived Without Sin, Pray For Us Who Have Recourse To Thee. The reverse of the medal bears the letter M intertwined with the cross, flanked by the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and surrounded by twelve stars.

Catherine was instructed to bring this design to her confessor. It took more than two years for her account to be believed and for the medal to be produced. Church officials doubted both the authenticity of her visions and her capacity to articulate such complex theological imagery — particularly the phrase “conceived without sin,” which had not yet been declared official doctrine. What ultimately persuaded them was not eloquence or authority, but Catherine’s consistency, her refusal to claim credit, and her insistence on remaining silent about her experiences. Her description of Mary’s physical presence — her warmth and weight, her corporality — was taken as proof of the vision’s reality.

The first medals were struck in 1832. Following the completion of her task, Catherine requested she be assigned to the care of the sick and dying. She dutifully served and lived the remainder of her life in obscurity. Only on her deathbed did she speak of the circumstances surrounding the medal, which by then had become an object of devotion throughout the Catholic world.

Our installation brings together devotional materials of St. Catherine — prayer cards, pamphlets, a copy of Lives of the Saints, and examples of the Miraculous Medal — alongside four prints by Raymond E. Mingst. These prints engage the story of Catherine Labouré through presence and withdrawal. In paired compositions, figures are shown and then removed, leaving only atmosphere: clouded skies, a garden setting, the space where revelation once appeared. What remains is not negation, but a spiritual afterimage. This approach extends Mingst’s ongoing engagement with absence, and the memorializing gesture. The sky or the garden becomes a witness not to miracle, but to attention itself. These works do not seek to explain the encounter with the spiritual. Instead, they offer a pause, a breath in which absence is allowed to speak.

Catherine Labouré’s life suggests that devotion need not announce itself, and that what is entrusted to us may matter more than what we claim. This holiday installation is offered in this spirit: as an invitation to stand in meditation with images that withhold as much as they reveal, and to consider the forms of care, labor, and attention that persist beyond recognition and declaration.

As we enter this winter season and move toward a new year, we share these works with a sense of gratitude for time spent in looking, for moments of contemplation, and for the sustaining gestures of grace that carry light through darker days. May there be room, in the midst of all that asks for our attention, to notice what is modestly offered, and to offer ourselves in return. Each of us has their light to shine.

Raymond E. Mingst, Untitled (Prayer Cards), 2025

Raymond E. Mingst | Arthur Bruso Co-founders, Curious Matter

© 2025 Curious Matter used with permission.

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