In her 1938 book Picasso she mentions an incident in 1909 when Picasso, after having completed the Cubist paintings Horta de Ebro and Maison sur la Colline, showed Stein the photographs that inspired the paintings. In fact, Stein continues to defend the representational nature of Cubism throughout her life, as if one could only get to an exact "resemblence," or image of life, through the distortion, repetition, and altering of the present moment to mimic perception. Resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and resemblance. To exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exactĪs a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in A later passage addresses how one might create "resemblance" in a verbal passage, which becomes something like repetition:Įxact resemblance. Would he like it if I told him." As a painter might wonder if he is flattering his subject sufficiently, Stein wonders if Picasso will like the "portrait" she writes for him as he hears it told back to him-his own Cubist philosophies translated into language. It begins: "If I told him would he like it. Stein’s literary portrait of Picasso "If I Told Him," completed nearly twenty years later and first published in Vanity Fair, is a similarly strange but tender attempt to capture a resemblance of his genius. Stein said later, "I was and still am satisfied with my portrait, for me it is I, and it is the only reproduction of me which is always I, for me." The completion of the portrait marks the beginning of Stein’s interest in portraiture and "resemblance," concepts that would come to influence her writing nearly as much as Picasso’s Cubist philosophies. Picasso famously said, "Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will," which was quoted by Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. In 1905, Picasso asked her to sit for a portrait, and the results (not Cubist, but representational) were dark, brooding, and strange. As her brother increasingly sided with the Impressionists, her taste in art became more experimental, and she was among the first major collectors of the Cubists. She became more and more certain of his genius. But as the number of visitors and the frequency of the salon-evenings increased, Stein's friendship with Picasso blossomed. Beside the more gregarious and articulate Matisse, Picasso, who was new to France and just learning to speak French, was thought of as "the quiet Spaniard" and was not at first understood by the guests at the Saturday-night dinner parties. Some of the visitors who frequented 27, Rue de Fleurus were the young experimental painters whose work Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein had been collecting: Picasso, Braques, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse. You can follow Picasso’s stunning shifts in style below.In the early 1900s, Gertrude Stein’s residence in Paris became a gathering place for artists and writers. Following this period, Picasso dabbled in a myriad of aesthetics, from Neo-Classicism to Surrealism (perceptible in his dreamy piece from 1938), though he often returned to both his signature primitive aesthetic and his quirky Cubist style until his death in 1973. As apparent in his self-portrait of the same year, this style incorporates geometry, fractured forms, and thick, black lines. He also began to use a warmer color palette of pinks during his Rose Period, and, in 1907, his well-known Cubist stage began. In 1901, he entered his Blue Period-a phase in which he painted somber, stylized scenes in cool blue tones, as evident in his striking self-portrait from the same year.įollowing his blue period, Picasso’s work began to show Primitive influences. Though a gifted draughtsman, Picasso did not dabble in this style for very long. While many people recognize him only for his avant-garde, topsy-turvy paintings, his earlier work-like his self-portraits from 18-exhibit his ability to paint and sketch beautiful true-to-life depictions.
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