Gertrude Stein on Modern Art – part 1
Stein concentrated much of her writing to explaining what separated Picasso’s individual styles chronologically. But the writing was less about the specific works, and more of an overview of modern art theory, although there were plenty of illustrations.The images along with the text provided a unique insight to the relationship between the artist and the collector. The biographical information provided by stein was injected with humorous bits of her interactions with Picasso.
One example was when he heard of a show __, he turned red and made the remark you must have an idea to paint. Picasso shows his vulnerable and insecure side to Stein. Many books I have read about Picasso would never entail antidotes that portray the artist as insecure and sensitive. Much of the literature only talks about the work. Even biographies tend the capture the artist from a removed perspective.
Stein captured the moments of transition and pivotal points in his development of his massive body of work. She skipped over the details and tried to cover a large overview of his prolific art. At times I was engaged with the interactions between the two of them but that was somewhat disrupted by injects of biographical information relating to the time of the story. It seemed to be a little overwhelming from page to page.
Overall Stein did a great a job a capturing the fleeting moments between meetings and the dialog included tended to about art. Not much was mentioned of his family and little of his friends specifically. She talked about Picasso’s first move to Paris, he related to more poets then painters. The idea generated by poets was more compelling for Picasso to work with. Maybe the translation of concrete words forming abstract concepts informs his work.
When talking of cubism she implied nature has always emulated art. This is an interest statement. Much of nature consists of fractals and patterns that inherently hold symbolic value through a variety of cultures.