Josephine Herbst
MISS PORTER AND MISS STEIN
Which is the "real" Gertrude Stein? Her portrait by Picasso
now on view at the Museum of Modern Art or the Miss Stein in the
article by Katherine Anne Porter in
Harper's Magazine,
December, 1947?
In feeling and attitude toward their subject the painter and writer
appear to be at opposite poles. There is nothing false in the details that
Miss Porter selects; each might have been verified by Miss Stein herself.
The chosen facts are assembled with wit and presented in flawless prose;
the given features are correct. But what is wrong with the expression?
What features are missing?
Miss Porter frankly admits that her subject has a "horrid fascina–
tion" for her; she sees Miss Stein as "one of the blights and symptoms
of her very sick times." Picasso's approach to the portrait of Gertrude
Stein, however, was not antipathetic. The painting itself recalls a period
and it is exactly this background and its significance that Miss Porter
blacks out. The portrait was commissioned by Miss Stein in 1905 when
Picasso was twenty-four, living in poverty in a Montmartre tenement.
He had just finished the famous series of circus acrobats, and the portrait
initiated an important new development in his work. During the sittings,
Picasso suddenly painted out the
whol~
head, declaring, "I don't see
you any longer when I look." That summer he went to Spain, Gertrude
Stein to Italy. When the painter returned, he painted in the head
without having seen her again. Between the painting out and the paint–
ing in a great change had come to Picasso's art and the two styles
survive in the work; the naturalistic method of the background and
the face in the new style, suggesting a sculptured mask with boldly
drawn .features similar to the faces seen in ancient Spanish sculpture.
Miss Stein was then working on
Three Lives,
Cubism was being born,
Cezanne had just died. The posthumous exhibition of Cezanne's paint–
ings was held in Paris in 1907 and not long after, Stieglitz opened 291
in New York. It was not until 1913 that the American public had a
chance at the post-Impressionists; . they were received with howling
568
