On Art

...On Art VISITING THE STEINS BY JAMES R. MELLOW FOR THE Steins-hose gregarious, intelligent American expatriates-esthetics was a family affau It determined their life styles, their friendships, the character of the paintings they hung on then-walls Moderately wealthy, they had the means to indulge their passion for art, particularly since the four of them--Gertrude, Leo, their elder brother Michael and his wife Sarah-elected to live in Pans where living expenses were considerably cheaper than in America at the turn of the century In addition, the Steins were quite willing to forgo the usual avocations of the nouveau riche--the best society, the smartest clothes, the most expensive hotels--in order to spend their money on the radical painters they had begun to meet m the French capital Gertrude and Leo, the most celebrated and eccentric members of the family, poked about Parisian art galleries and visited the official salons in brother-and-sister outfits of brown corduroy with Grecian-style sandals on their feet The more conservative Michael and Sarah adopted conventional modes of dress Because of their brash art-buying habits, Gertrude and Leo occasionally would be obliged to borrow from friends or seek advances from the business-minded Michael, who constantly admonished them to keep their financial affairs in order They were as generous with the artists they knew as they were indulgent of themselves Whenever Picasso, Juan Gris or the Amencan painter Marsden Hartley were especially hard up, the Stems would either give them money outright or provide advances against future purchases They made a point, too, of bringing more affluent friends-like their old Baltimore acquaintances, Dr Clanbel Cone and her sister Etta--around to the studios of Picasso and Matisse to make a few life-saving purchases There was something of the native American crank in both Gertrude and Leo Gertrude, for instance, devised a strange binary system by which she divided all humanity into "dependent-independent" and "independent-dependent" categories She devoted hours to analyzing her friends, 'trying to determine what she called their "bottom-natures" It was on this system that she based her long novel, The Making of Americans, she was firmly convinced that this marvelously eccentric and numbingly tedious book was the great American novel, placing her securely in the company of Joyce and Proust While Gertrude doggedly pursued her career as a writer, Leo spent his life trying to find a suitable vocation for his restless energies He went through history, philosophy, art history, physiology, psychology--abandoning each of these disciplines when he found what he considered serious flaws in their systems of thought Dissatisfied with established techniques of psychotherapy, he even embarked upon his own course of self-analysis, periodically issuing progress reports to his close friends The Steins adopted an open, democratic style of entertaining in Left-Bank Paris Anyone and everyone, from the wealthiest American tourist to the poorest Hungarian art student, was welcome to attend the Saturday evening at-homes" the Stems held regularly during the decade before World War I--Gertrude and Leo at their two-story pavilion and adjoining studio at 27 rue de Fleurus, Michael and Sarah in their nearby apartment on the rue Madame The focal point of these crowded social gatherings was the extraordinary collection of vanguard art that the "Stein Corporation"--as some disgruntled artists referred to the family--had amassed and was eagerly promoting At Michael's flat the works of Matisse predominated, stunning and vivid Fauve landscapes and figure paintings At the rue de Fleurus the fare was more varied The walls of the studio-room where Gertrude and Leo entertained were hung, tier-deep, with Picassos, Matisses, Cezannes and Renoirs There were, as well, significant paintings by Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, minor works by Manet and Daumier The steady stream of international visitors who attended these Saturday nights at the rue de Fleurus made it, m fact, the first unofficial museum of modern art Leo served as lecturer and guide, relentlessly proselytizing his guests on the virtues of modern art Esthetics could also provoke bitter family disagreements In 1914, when Leo and Gertrude broke up housekeeping, one of the precipitating causes was Leo's unhappiness with the Cubist phase of Picasso's work, another was his derogatory attitude toward Gertrude's radical writing style Both, he maintained, were "godalmighty rubbish' Leo removed himself to Italy, leaving the rue de Fleurus establishment to Gertrude and her friend Alice B Toklas The collection was divided Gertrude kept all the Picassos and several Cezannes, while Leo took his share of Cezannes and all the Renoirs The Steins apparently disposed of most of there Matisses when they separated Gertrude, having become Picasso's ardent champion, had lost interest in the older painter's work, and Leo had come to the sad conclusion that Matisse's pictures were "rhythmically insufficient" It was a strange turn for this leader in the fight for modernism During 1904-07, when Leo was most actively campaigning for modern art, he was the unrivaled authority on the subject No one had a better grasp of the development of painting from Cezanne down to the work of Picasso and Matisse, his two most important discoveries of the period The views Leo expounded then have since become standard dogma in the history of modernism Unfortunately, modern art was another of the vocations Leo found wanting The Museum of Modern Art has mounted a stunning, even spectacular, commemoration entitled Four Americans in Paris The Collections of Gertrude Stein and Her Family The exhibition has been directed and assembled--with the assistance of a generous grant from the Alcoa Foundation--by Margaret Potter, an associate curator in the museum's department of painting and sculpture This magnificent assemblage of 255 paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings ranges from a small Manet "Ball Scene" to a dazzling array of Cezannes and Renoirs, but focuses upon the Matisse and Picasso works that formed the bulk of the large Stein collections Impressive as the exhibition is--not only in the wealth of the material but for the number of master-works included—it is staggering to realize that nearly a hundred additional items were unavailable Some pieces of major importance, like Matisse's huge 1905-06 decorative idyll "The Joy of Life" (now at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania), could not be borrowed, either because the institutions involved have strict policies against loaning or because private collectors were reluctant to part with their pictures (In many cases, the whereabouts of former Stem pictures is still unknown ) Nevertheless, more has been gathered here from public and private collections throughout the world than one can take m during a single visit Most of it is superb testimony to the Steins' perceptive tastes At the end of its New York showing (March 1), the exhibition will travel, slightly altered, to Baltimore, San Francisco and Ottawa It is clearly a major event Assembling the exhibition required many weeks of patient detective work The Stein collections were extremely fluid Paintings were frequently exchanged between members of the family, traded back to dealers for newer acquisitions, sold off to visitors and friends when money was needed No catalogue was ever compiled and none of the Steins kept detailed records of their sales Fortunately, however, they often had their studios photographed Miss Potter has done a superb job of tracking down some of the more elusive Stem pictures by poring over the old studio photographs with a magnifying glass and searching through illustrated books and catalogues to locate their present owners As a result, a sumptuous Bonnard nude was discovered m Australia, the Manet was traced to a collector in Sweden, and from the rows of barely discernible Cezanne watercolors that hung in Gertrude's studio, two have been obtained--one from the Louvre, the second from an anonymous New Yorker A special documentary section of the show features several of the early studio photographs, others have been reproduced in the splendid catalogue the museum has issued for the exhibition Lavishly illustrated, the volume contains essays about the roles of each of the Steins as well as an interesting account of their relationships to the Cone sisters, whose own remarkable collection of modern art--including several former Stein works —was willed to the Baltimore Museum of Art The most impressive of these essays, m my opinion, are Irene Gordon's tribute to Leo Stem and Douglas Cooper's study of Gertrude Stem's relationship to Juan Gris One of her favorite artists, the Cubist painter is represented in the show by 10 works, among them the beautiful 1914 collage "Flowers " These two essays illustrate quite perfectly the sharply divided attitudes Leo and Gertrude brought to modern art Leo's interest centered exclusively upon formal and esthetic issues, while Gertrude's appreciation evolved from her understanding of an artist's character and personality And that rather succinctly defines the alternating criteria by which modern art has been evaluated ever since the legendary days when the Steins resided in Paris...