Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso- The Invention of Language

 

Andy Warhol: Gertrude Stein 1980 acrylic and silk screen print (New York Whitney Museum of American Art)

The Exhibition at the Luxembourg Palace spotlights two great creative artists of the 20th Century:  Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). They were both foreigners in France, Gertrude Stein from the United States and Picasso from Spain. This  gave them them something in common and also a detachment and space to create new modern languages- he in painting, she in writing. When they met in 1905, she was 31 and Picasso was 24.  Both admired Cézanne: 

Paul Cézanne : Pommes et biscuits (Apples and biscuits) 1880 Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

Gertrude Stein started writing her "Three Lives" while contemplating Cézanne's "Portrait of Mme Cézanne with fan"- a work which she acquired and never parted from until three years before her death. Cézanne's use of colour to define form and his altering of traditional perspective helped inspire Picasso's Cubism. 

Picasso: Trois figures sous un arbre (Three figures under a tree) 1907-8 Musée Picasso

 Gertrude Stein was composing landscape and still life descriptions in her work of prose poems "Tender Buttons" at the same time as Picasso and Braque were geometrizing the landscape  and assembling collages. The painting below was acquired along with three other landscapes by Leo and Gertrude Stein:      

Picasso: Paysage aux deux figures (Landscape wth two figures) 1908 Musée Picasso

Gertrude had moved to Paris in 1904, via London, to live with her closest brother Leo in the rue Fleurus, only ten minutes away from the Luxembourg gallery, site of the present exhibition. This was where the Louvre displayed its contemporary art- Impressionism, Cezanne, Matisse....  Gertrude's brother Leo was a would-be artist, but it was through Gertrude that their flat became a meeting place for writers and artists.

Henri Matisse: Nature morte aux oranges (Still life with oranges) 1912 Musée Picasso, Paris

The above painting was kept by Picasso until he died; he said of his elder colleague that he was impressed by Matisse's ability to make strong colours stay on the canvas together.  It was at the Steins' place that Matisse and Picasso first met in the spring of 1906. 

By destroying traditional perspective, Cézanne and Matisse changed the language of art in the early 20th century. Braque and Picasso together developed Cubism:

Georges Braque: 5 bananes et 2 poires (5 bananas and 2 pears)1908 Pompidou Centre

Although he normally refused to do portraits, Picasso offered to paint Gertrude. They had many long discussions about art and life as she sat for him in his studio at the 'Bateau Lavoir' in Montmartre. Gertrude claimed they had 90 sessions. The portrait, which was finished by Picasso in her absence after a stay in Gosol in the Pyrenees, is missing from this exhibition. Its home is the Metropolitan in New York:

Picasso: Portrait of Gertrude Stein 1905-6 Metropolitan Museum, New York

Their conversations were in broken French- Picasso said it was their own particular form of French (according to Stein in her "Everybody's Autobiography"). He portrays her as an imposing masculine character; he once addressed a letter to her as "Mademoiselle Stein, homme de letres" (sic- 'man of letters'). She was one of the first to see Picasso's experiments in Cubism with his "Demoiselles d'Avignon" (also now in New York ). She bought several studies from this period of Picasso's work.

Picasso: Femmes aux mains jointes (Woman with clasped hands) study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907 Musée Picasso

Around this time, Gertrude Stein was inspired to continue with her major work "The Making of Americans"- a  4-inch thick book which is rarely read as readers generally find it rather impenetrable. Her style, like that of the painter, became fragmented and non-linear. Just as painters were tearing apart reality, Stein was one of the first writers to destroy narrative. 

Juan Gris: Verres, journal et bouteille de vin (Glasses, newspaper and bottle of wine) 1913

After the 1st World war, when Gertrude Stein could no longer afford Picasso, she bought several works by Juan Gris- Spanish, like Picasso. In her "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas", Gertrude stated that "Picasso created cubism. Juan Gris gave it its clarity and exaltation"

Juan Gris: Nature morte au livre (Still life with book) 1913 Pompidou Centre

Gertrude Stein claimed to be writing in Cubist fashion. She certainly took a radical attitude to the English language. Several of her sayings are displayed on the walls of the Exhibition, including her famous phrase from  'Sacred Emily ':

"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"

 Contemporary artist, famous for his 'outrageous' dada works, Marcel Duchamp, understood Gertrude. Perhaps she was more akin to the visual artists. There is circularity in both their works. One of the exhibits at the Luxembourg is a set of rotating discs by Marcel Duchamp from the 1930s: 

Marcel Duchamp: Facsimiles of Rotoreliefs (original series in 1935) Paper stuck on plexiglass

Stein's influence may be traced from the 1930s through the avant garde art movements of the 50s and 60s such as Fluxus or Minimalist art and even up to the present:

James Lee Byars: Is 1989 gilt marble and The Halo 1985 gilt copper (Louis Vuitton Foundation)

Miss Stein's repetitive language was set to music by John Cage in similar repetitive style. There are snatches of his early composition "Three Songs" playing  in the exhibition, the title echoing Stein's "Three Lives".

The exhibition moves on to further experiments with an installation: "Good Boy, Bad Boy"  by Bruce Nauman, where phrases are repeated over and over on TV screens. There is a curious upside down mouth video by the same artist, endlessly repeating the same words:

Bruce Nauman: Lip Sync 1969 Pompidou Centre

 During her career as a writer, Gertrude Stein wrote poems, novels, but also plays and operas. Her last opera "Mother of us all" (produced after Gertrude Stein's death) was a public success. It was based on the feminist figure Susan B Anthony.

Poster for Gertrude Stein's opera: The Mother of us all.

The present exhibition includes extracts of some of her works, including her early opera "Four Saints in Three Acts", with music by composer Virgil Thomson, who has been called the American Eric Satie. It was taken on tour to New York and Chicago in the 30s and was a sell-out. The fact that the text was unclear did not matter to the composer- it went well with the music and such phrases as :

"Pigeons on the grass, alas, alas"

must have been often repeated by the American public at the time. The opera enjoyed a renaissance in the 50s thanks to the Living Theatre group, who found Broadway too commercial.   

Apart from her work, Gertrude Stein cut quite a figure. Portraits of her in the exhibition range from Cecil Beaton's strict grey and white photo, taken at the time of her successful lecture tour to the states in 1934- when she returned to America after 31 years abroad:    

Cecil Beaton: Portrait of Gertrude Stein 1934 photo

                                                                                                                                                                       to an amusing robot portrait by Nam June Paik:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Nam June Paik:  Gertrude Stein 1990 installation of TV screens 1990 (The Ekard Collection) 

Nam June Paik, the Korean American artist, is credited with being the first to incorporate videos into his artworks. By the 1960s, the Picasso portrait of Gertrude had become an icon in art history.  Rauschenberg included it in his print:

Robert Rauschenberg: Centennial Certificate MMA 1969 lithography (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

 Artist Gary Hill, with the painting below, dating from 2022, conjures up the gender issue presently being debated. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas enjoyed the freedom of Paris in the 1920s to live their lives as a same sex couple, in a bohemian artistic world.                                                                                                                                                          

Gary Hill: She/He (liminal gate 4) (Engender project) 2022

In the 80s, Andy Warhol had made a series of portraits, using pink or blue, evoking similar gender issues (see above), but also proclaiming her as a Jewish icon, by including her in his work: 10 Portraits of  Jews of the Twentieth Century:

Andy Warhol: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century 1980 Fondation Louis Vuitton

The painter and the writer were both buried in the land of their election- Picasso in the South of France and Stein with her devoted companion Alice in Pėre Lachaise cemetery, Paris.  One of the last items on show is a decorative close-up photo of Stein's gravestone, with flowers:                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: "Untitled" Alice B.Toklas' and Gertrude Stein's grave, Paris ca 1992 photograph

We may perhaps read into this photo a symbol of the endless regeneration of art, with the voice of Gertrude Stein echoing throughout the exhibition:

"Look here, being intelligible is not what it seems... if you enjoy it you understand it"

The Exhibition runs until the 28th January 2024 at the Musée du Luxembourg, 19 rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris

Metros: St Sulpice or Mabillon

Open daily from 10h30 until 7pm (until 10pm on Mondays)

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