Seeing Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Before there was modernism, before there was feminism, there was Gertrude Stein and her intimate companion Alice B. Toklas. Their salon, held at 9 p.m. on Saturdays at their Paris apartment, was the place to be in early 20th Century Paris. Their circle included artists like Picasso and Matisse and writers like Hemingway. For years, Man Ray was their personal photographer until he asked to get paid.

But despite Stein's obvious connections and influence in the world of arts and letters, questions still abound about her real legacy. Was she, as she described herself a visionary genius, whose writing would not truly be understand for at least 50 years? Was her taste in arts tasteful or tasteless? How did she survive in Nazi-occupied France during World War II despite the fact that she was a Jew, a lesbian, and a supporter of modern arts?

The exhibit Seeing Gertrude Stein: 5 Stories now at the National Portrait Gallery is an attempt to shed light on those and other questions. Today, we took a special tour of the exhibit given by exhibit curator Wanda Corn, art professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Stein in her Caesar image

Corn said Stein was extremely conscious of her image and was constantly reinventing herself, sort of a precursor to such trendsetters as Madonna and Lady Gaga. It was said of Stein that Stein's favorite subject was Stein. She posed for more than 25 artists including Picasso. In her early years as an American expatriate, she was reflected in artists' renderings as a "Buddha of the Left Bank." However, not all portraits were flattering. Her short hairstyle,  which Stein herself referred to as her "Julius Caesar cut," prompted an artist who had been cast out of Stein's circle to make an ink and sepia drawing of her in a toga, leaning back as if on a throne, holding a globe in one hand. "That hand on the globe is intentional saying that she had too much power and authority over the world of art, sort of like a Caesar," Corn explained.

The curator said that the manly Stein and feminine Toklas ("There really was no Gertrude without an Alice. They called each other wifey and hubby") created the 1st modern art museum with their Saturday night open salons. "If you wanted to see modern art in Paris in the early part of the 20th Century, you went to visit Alice and Gertrude,"  Corn said.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Of her collecting, Stein once said. " I could either buy clothes (actually Toklas made the stylish outfits both wore) or buy art and I chose to buy art." Although involved for more than 40 years in a lesbian relationship, neither Stein nor Toklas commented on the issue. When an interviewer once asked Stein about her sex life, she answered "My sex life? Ha, ha, ha, ha." Both partners championed male homosexuals and their circle reflected that adoption. "We are surrounded by homosexuals," Stein wrote. "They do all the good things in all the arts,"

While Stein reveled in her role as artistic muse, she really desired fame for her own writing. Finally, in the 1930s she achieved some of that with the acceptance of her book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and a successful lecture tour of American colleges in the 1930s. Stein, never one to hide her self-proclaimed abilities claimed, "I brought the revolution to writing that Picasso brought to painting."

Mash-up image of Gertrude Stein and Gloria Steinhem

Stein died in 1946 after somehow being able to spend World War II in a countryside estate in Nazi-occupied France. However, interest in her life did not end with her death and began escalating anew in the 1960s. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Stein (and Toklas) period is that her life contained so many segments -   Bohemian liver, lesbian lover, patron of the arts, Earth Mother to struggling young artists, World War I nurse, World War II benefactor of help from Nazi collaborators (?), innovative writer, or self-proclaimed genius with no discernible talent. As NPR concluded its article on the exhibition, Stein is "likely to remain many different things to many different people - a mythical figure of the Left Bank, a lesbian role model, a feminist pioneer, a language innovator."

Tales, Tidbits, and Traveling Tips
Stein makes for fascinating study. If you would like to check out this exhibition yourself, it will remain at the National Portrait Gallery until Jan. 22, 2012.  If you can't make it to DC by then, there is the guidebook shown here which includes all the details and background of the exhibit..