Art Four Americans in Paris

TO BEGIN with, Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Radcliffe, liked Professor William James, and collected modern art.

To begin with, Gertrude Stein liked Picasso, Matisse, the Cubists, and wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

To begin with, Gertrude Stein went to live with her brother Leo in Paris in 1906 at 27 due de Fleurus and became promoter of the avant-garde: "The Mother Goose of Montparnasse."

Gertrude was then one being living. She lived on the Left Bank, an American in Paris, opening her house every Saturday evening to writers, critics, artists, and other intellectuals till her death in 1946.

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) has tried to hold open house once more with the Steins, not only at 27 rue de Fleurus where Gertrude and her brother Leo lived, but at 58 rue Madame where their older brother Michael lived with his wife Sarah. MOMA has succeeded in opening the Stein houses, yet we only get glimpses of Gertrude-we overhear only fragments of her remarks about Picasso, Cubism, Picasso, Picasso-we see Leo exclaiming, "Cezanne... Picasso's Blue Period... Matisse!" And Michael and Sarah are lost somewhere in their house that Le Corbusier built at Garches. We feel more like we're at a cocktail party, filling in what our hosts and hostesses are saying, than at a Saturday evening salon with the Steins, sharing and discussing their art collection.

Cocktail parties are all right if you find one person and talk to him. Cocktail parties are all right if you find one painting and look at it. But why bother bringing paintings or people together? Do we put the Stein collection together only to look individually at Picasso's Cubist landmarks: his famous 1906 portrait of Gertrude or his Student with a Pipe?

What are these paintings when placed in the Stein context?

Context directs the statement of any art work. How do we view The Great Gatsby after reading Ulysses? Is Fitzgerald the same after reading The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby? Today's conceptual artists specify context where previously most artists have not. Just putting works into an exhibit puts works in context: does a painting of an apple look the same when in Gertrude Stein's collection as when in the collection of the President of Del Monte canned foods? Yet how we arrange paintings within the exhibition creates smaller contextual elements clarifying and defining the larger whole; these smaller elements are the visual evidence imperative to any visual lesson. An exhibition becomes a work of art itself: a statement made through visual context and a statement of context.

What are these paintings when placed in the Stein context and what is the Stein context?

As director of the show, Margaret Potter, associate curator of Painting and Sculpture, has realized her contextual statement in the belief that the Stein context defines itself; she has not emphasized the intellectual milieu of the Steins by clarifying their ideas about these works, but instead has arranged the show primarily by chronology, evoking a historical document with an assumption of intellectual history in the visual and literary arts of the Stein era. The catalogue clarifies some of the literary trends and ideas, but the visual thinking is limited. Still, there are a few excellent examples of visual clarification.

GERTRUDE'S interest in Cubism is one of the strongest points illustrated by an effective use of context. We can see fascinating studies of early Cubism in the Picassos from 1907 to 1914. And a Cezanne apple contrasted with the Picasso apple next to it evokes Gertrude Stein's imagery: the apple turns round and round, unlimited in space. Studies for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and for Nude with Drapery show how Picasso was beginning to juxtapose dark and light without shadowing or shading-the result, a differentiation in spatial positions: a new technique, a new space, a new way of looking.

What did the Steins see? What did these visual artists see? Why was this the avant-garde? We get only hints of the answers.

Someone in the Stein family obviously liked Picasso and Matisse; this is made clear by over 100 Picassos in the show, and Matisse seems a close second with about 70 works. But is it significant only to know that the Steins liked these artists? What is it that the Steins liked about them? And did each of the members of the family like the same artists?

One room shows the decisive break that Gertrude had with her brother Leo in collecting. (Unfortunately, only the audio-guide tour points out that this room consists of works Gertrude chose alone, without the assistance of Leo). Where Leo had chosen bold Matisses and sensuous Bonnards and Renoirs, Gertrude chose the more analytical Cubists.

We can infer Gertrude's playfulness in Picasso's Still Life with Fruit and Glass (1908): a creative game when the contour of the glass becomes the contour line of the pear. Can you tell whither glass is in front or in back of the pear?

A fascinating historical piece of evidence is Picasso's Still Life with Calling Card (1914) showing a calling card imprinted with the two names: Miss Gertrude Stein and Miss Alice B. Toklas, living at 27 rue de Fleurus.

Michael and Sarah Stein are more clearly defined by the catalogue, but their villa at Granches which they commissioned from Le Corbusier, then a little known architect, is a visual evolution from the simple exterior-a cubical form-to three-dimensional puzzle parts like winding staircases and long ribbon windows.

Clarification of individual personalities in the Stein family might have been successful with tapes of Gertrude or Leo reading from their writings about particular artists. Picasso's work might be better understood if Gertrude were saying: "This one was working and something was coming then, something was coming out of this one then..." Or if an African mask were adjacent to Gertrude's Cubist-like portrait, or if Leo were expressing his excitement over Cezanne when he had really gone to Italy to study Italian painters: Mantegna for Leo was "a sort of Cezanne precursor with the color running all through it."

Chronological sorting allows the creative and visually-trained eye to make connections between paintings and artists, paintings and the Steins, paintings and visual development, but to share the excitement of the Steins' creative vision we must see what they saw in the works, not just look at the works themselves. What we can only share in this show is the enthusiasm of the Paris scene, with Matisse's bright colors and sensual forms and Picasso's unlimited perceptions; we can't help but turn the corners on the Left Bank with the Steins as we go through the Luxembourg Gardens with its marionette shows and young girls basking in the sun or as we pass by windows with prolific flowers to sell or as we smell the crepes just coming off the griddles; these are all parts of the Stein collection.