I just got back from a wonderful exhibition at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum. "Gertrude Stein: Five Stories" is an aesthetic exploration of Stein's life told in five sequences.
The first, "Picturing Gertrude", presents young photos of her and her family, but is really focused on her as she was photographed by significant artists. In this way, it is very much about Stein's unique and formidable appearance. To understand this woman and writer, and her impact on art, means understanding what she looked like.
The second, "Domestic Stein," focuses on her life with her partner, or "wife", Alice B. Toklas. This section chronicles their domestic partnership and the creation of their home, salon, and fashion aesthetic. Again, it is represented largely through photographs of the two women. They were photographed together as a couple frequently, and this "story" was particularly significant in that in anchors Stein's life and persona in her lesbian relationship.
Perhaps the most important "story", and literally the central one, is "The Art of Friendship" which presents the artistic and social circles which Stein inhabited. The many famous men who Stein was friends with are a critical part of her legacy. Yet somehow (and I'm really not sure why) I found this the least dynamic part of the show. It seemed a little rushed, too. Interestingly though, it took it's time with her opera and theater collaborations, and included footage from a dramatic ballet which Stein wrote the words for. I had no idea she created librettos...
The fourth part, "Celebrity Stein" chronicles her tour of America, her fame in her own country following the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and follows her interest in the World War and her writings on war. Interestingly, the exhibition mentions that she and Toklas were protected Jews during the Nazi occupation of France, but there is little information as to what this was like for the couple.
The fifth and final "story", "Legacies" showcases the impact Stein had on art after her death. Featuring the Andy Warhol portrait, this section includes pieces by Glen Ligon and other's (I can't remember the name of the female artist whose work was an inverted image of Stein created entirely with spools of thread, seen through a glass viewer...).
The sections that were most significant for me were the second and fifth. It was very moving seeing a public lesbian relationship from that era highlighted and given significance. The small final section put her enduring work into context.
Although each story included brief bits of text from Stein's work, I would have liked if more of her unique and difficult language was included.
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