Week 3

Assignment:

• Read the following description of Leo and Gertrude's apartment in Paris.

The Steins' tiny apartment — situated on a narrow, tree-lined street — was jammed full of paintings. Gertrude's brother, Leo, got there first, in 1902, and Gertrude moved in the next year.

"The Rue de Fleurus apartment was smaller than most people's dining rooms," says Rebecca Rabinow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the show will open in February. "These pictures were just stacked from floor to ceiling. There was no electric light at the beginning, so people would sometimes light matches so they could see the pictures in the dark corners."

Assignment:

• Read the following notes about  Leo Stein and answer the questions at the end.

Notes About Leo Stein

Leo Stein was born in Pittsburgh, PA. He spent his childhood in Europe. He returned to the US and lived in Oakland, CA where his father worked in street cars, the stock exchange and real estate. Michael Stein, his older brother, took over the family business when the father died in January 1891. Michael was 26. Leo then moved to Baltimore and lived with an aunt there until it was time for him to start Harvard.

What do we know about Leo? “But in art and aesthetics, Leo was guide and teacher. He knows the works of art, which are the best books and where to get them, he supplies photogravures, prints, reproductions. Leo is the intellectual focus, Gertrude, the social center of their circle of friends. She is in on the visits to the museums, the hunt for Japanese prints, the expeditions the Steins call "junking." There is great talk from Leo, but friends talk with Gertrude. Her name is connected with their convivial times.”

In October 1900 Leo settled in Florence with the goal of writing a book about Mantegna, but when he learned that two other writers were working on a similar project he abandoned the idea. He became friends with the art historian Bernard Berenson and visited with him in London in September 1902. He decided to leave London for Paris in December 1902; he even took up painting but he wasn’t very good at it.

“In his later years Leo Stein dismissed his painting of this time. As with everything else he undertook, he says, it went well at the beginning but then, because he was incapable of building on his skills, it became worse and worse. The single importance he gives to his painting then is that it led him to settle in Paris.”

In the spring of 1904 Berenson came to Paris and “gave Leo advice. "Do you know Cezanne?" he asked. I said, "No." "Well, look him up." Where?" "At Vollard's on the Rue Lafitte."

Leo was 28 when he met Berenson in Florence in October 1900. They quickly established a strong friendship. In the fall of 1902 Leo accompanied Berenson to England, where they were joined by Gertrude. Leo would visit Berenson during subsequent summers and Berenson would often see Leo when he went to London to see his wife's family. However, after Leo moved to Paris, learned to paint, failed to publish and began to listen to his sister Gertrude, who disliked Berenson, the relationship suffered and by 1910 the friendship had ended.

At this point he began to explore contemporary art. He wrote a survey of Impressionist and Post Impressionist painters in which he talked about Puvis de Chavannes and the Big Four: Manet, (painter par excellence), Renoir (who has the gift of color), Degas (the master of line) and Cezanne (the master of mass).

He wrote very little about his experience of buying his first paintings by Matisse and Picasso-

“The Autumn salon is over and has left two pictures stranded in our atelier. All our recent accessions are unfortunately by people you never heard of, so there’s no use trying to describe them, except that one of those out of the salon made everybody laugh except a few who got mad about it, and two other pictures are by a young Spaniard named Picasso whom I consider a genius of very considerable magnitude and one of the most notable draughtsmen living.”

As the collection grew the Steins held salons on Saturday evenings. If you wanted to see the latest in modern art you went there. All sorts of people came: dealers, artists, writers, collectors, friends, relatives, acquaintances. And Leo held court, lecturing about the paintings.

“Leo was always standing up before the canvases, his eyeglasses shining and with an obstinate look on his face that so strongly resembled an old ram. . . . with a fire no one would have suspected in the thoughtful scholar, he sought in every way to interpret the intention in them. . . . patiently night after night wrestling with the inertia of his guests, expounding, teaching, interpreting . . ,”

Many, Mabel Luhan says, went to the Steins "for the fun of it, and half angrily, half jestingly giggled and scoffed after they left." But there were others among them who saw what Leo Stein saw, and their enthusiasm was responsible for carrying the names of Matisse and Picasso outside France.”

According to the journalist Hutchins Hapgood,  "And there seemed to be something in him which took it for granted that anything said by anybody except himself needed immediate denial or a least substantial modification. He seemed to need constant reinforcement of his ego...but as I have suggested there was something singularly pure, high-minded and noble about him. Had it not been for the shadow of himself, his constant need of feeling superior to all others, he would have been a great man."

The bulk of the collection held by Leo and Gertrude was Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso.

Leo bought his last Matisse in 1908 and his last Picasso in 1910. He didn’t like cubism and stopped buying Picasso because of that. Leo found the new style to be an "utter abomination":it was all surface and no substance, a vacant attempt at intellectualism...."

Gertrude and Leo split in 1913. They divided their collection. He took the Renoirs and a few Matisses. She kept the rest. He left Paris and went to live in Italy. What happened? He said he couldn’t stand her writing. Or was it her relationship with Alice B. Toklas who was living with them?

Leo and Gertrude never spoke again.

“I'm going to Florence a simple-minded person of the "Old School" without a single Picasso, hardly any Matisses, only 2 Cezanne paintings & some aquarelles, and 16 Renoirs. Rather an amusing baggage for a leader in the great modern fight. But que voulez vous. The fight is already won & lost. . . . Cezanne & Matisse have permanently interesting qualities, Picasso might have had . . .if he had developed his gifts instead of exploiting those that he did not possess. The general situation of painting here is loathsome with its cubico-futuristic tommyrotting. I don't believe it can last very long, however, as its effectiveness is soon seen through & when no longer curious it becomes a bore. It is, even on the part of the most distinguished representative, nothing better than an exploitation of ingenuity.”

He returned to NYC May 1915. One interesting fact is that he became a close friend of Albert Barnes whom he had first met in Paris in 1912. He took up writing often incorporating Freudian theories in his analysis. In November 1919 he returned to Europe where he lived the rest of his life. To finance his lifestyle he sold off most of the rest of his collection to Barnes and Durand-Ruel in 1921. He finally published the A-B-C of Aesthetics in 1922 (explaining his aesthetic philosophy) which was not well received. He took up painting again seriously in 1930 but he seriously lacked money. He was reportedly very hurt when he read Gertrude's autobiography in 1933 in which she claims to have discovered Matisse and Picasso; she basically erased him from their joint history. He wrote to a friend that his sister had found it necessary "practically to eliminate me." 

He spent the years of WW2 in Italy and after the war published a kind of memoir Appreciation: Painting, Poetry and Prose. The book received positive reviews especially from Barnes. Unfortunately he died shortly after the publication and couldn't really enjoy its success from people he so eagerly hoped to impress.

• Answer the following questions:

1.      What role did Leo play in establishing the Stein collection and in the weekly salons?

2.      What stands out for you about Leo’s personality and character traits?

3.      Why did the two siblings split in 1913?

4.      The brother and sister strongly argued over who would keep the Cezanne apple painting. Why do you think they argued so vehemently about that painting?

5. Who were Leo's Big Four?

Assignment:

• Watch a video from the Met's lecture series on the Steins Collect.  This video discusses the role of Leo Stein primarily. Stop at 25.50 minutes.

Assignment: 

• Read an article titled "An Eye for Genius: the Collections of Gertrude and Leo Stein" and answer the accompanying questions.

Questions:

1, How did Bernard Berenson influence Leo's taste in art?

2. What was the pivotal painting that the Stein siblings bought?

3. What was the first painting by Picasso that they purchased?

4. What was Gertrude Stein's first literary success?

5. What was the first painting that Gertrude bought without Leo?

6. What happened to the 19 paintings that Michael and Sarah Stein lent to a Berlin gallery in July 1914?

7. What 2 paintings did Gertrude and Alice take with them to the countryside during WW2?

Assignment:

• Watch a 30 minute photographic video from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to experience the breadth of the Stein collection. The video includes some readings by Gertrude Stein which you should find quite interesting.

Optional Assignment:

• Read a short excerpt from "Two Women" the short story Gertrude Stein wrote about the Cone sisters. 

In 1912 she completed "Two Women," a dual portrait of the Cone sisters, whom Gertrude named Martha [Claribel] and Ada [Etta]:

". . . They were large women, both of them, anybody could see them. They were large women either of them. Very many saw them. Very many saw each one of them. Some saw them. Really not very many saw them, saw both of them. They were large women. Really not very many saw both of them. And that was a natural thing. There were two of them. They were together and they knew it then. They were not together and they knew it then. They were both large women and they were very different the one from the other of them, very different, and one, Ada, was younger and called her sister, sister Martha, and one, Martha was older and called her sister Ada."

Images Class 3