So I finished Picasso by Gertrude Stein the other day. I wrote on my Good Reads account "It's a bit of a jarring book to follow, but it reveals a lot about Picasso and Stein without revealing a lot of actual events in either of their lives. It's that which makes the read an interesting one. Unfortunately, or fortunately when I read the book I picture Kathy Bates across from me and I as Owen Wilson having Picasso explained to me. Thanks a lot Woody Allen". I gave it a three star rating because she sort of kept repeating and rambling, which I suppose was her intentional style, but it ended up being somewhat repetitive. But, I desperately envy her life so I can't criticize her work too much.
There are a couple of passages that stuck out for me in the book that I'll further explore here.
First, she had a fascinating view on whether people or generations really change. "People really do not change from one generation to another, as far back as we know history people are about the same as they were, they have had the same needs, the same desires, the same virtues and the same qualities, the same defects, indeed nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen, the streets change, the way of being driven in the streets change, the buildings change, the comforts in the houses change, but the people from one generation to another do not change" (Stein, 10). This struck me as I have often wondered whether this generation (mine and the one younger than I) have changed drastically because of the onslaught of negative comments on social media and the internet. But, I have often felt that people haven't changed, only that they've been given an anonymous platform to spew their venom that they've previously spewed only in the confines of personal journals or small circles. Stein seems to have confirmed my feeling that it was the latter. But, from an aesthetics standpoint, Stein points out that the creator in the arts is similar to all the others of his generation, being sensitive in the changes around his generation and thus his art is influenced by those changes.
Second, she made a fascinating point about war. Having just come through the Great War, the War to end all Wars, undoubtedly her views were shaped by such a cataclysmic event. "It is an extraordinary thing but it is true, wars are only a means of publicising the things already accomplished, a change, a complete change, has come about, people no longer think as they were thinking but no one knows it, no one recognises it, no one really knows it except the creators. The others are too busy with the business of life, they cannot what has happened, but the creator, the real creator, does nothing, he is not concerned with the activity of existing, and as he is not active, that is to say as he is not concerned with the activity of existence he is sensitive enough to understand how people are thinking, he is not interested in knowing how they were thinking, his sensitive feeling is concerned in understanding how people live as they are living. The spirit of everybody is changed, a whole people is changed, but mostly nobody knows it and a war forces them to recognise it because during a war the appearance of everything changes very much quicker, but really the entire change has been accomplished and the war is only something which forces everybody to recognise it" (Stein, 29-30). Without claiming to be a historian of any such note, it struck me the similarities between pre-WWI and pre-9/11. There was fear and constant tension in Europe pre-WWI. Everyone was on edge in the government. The people might not have felt it in their everyday lives, but times were changing. When WWI came to an end the change was complete and everyone knew it. The war announced the change. Similarly, 9/11 and the War on Terror announced the change. There were rumblings of something terrible to happen at the dawn of the 21st century. The Lockerbie Bombing, the first attack on the World Trade Towers in 1993 and the Oklahoma City Bombing and various other terrorist events marked the rumblings of a great conflict to come. When 9/11 happened and the subsequent wars in Iraq & Afghanistan came to be, the world was changed. Americans had become more fearful, less optimistic. The times had changed and the wars in the Middle East, coupled with anti-terror measures at home announced the changes that had been going on for at least two decades in the war. The times had changed, the manner of how people think had changed and everybody was made aware of it in war.
But, not everything I took from Stein was as heavy or serious as this. Thirdly, I discovered that Stein's view of the Creator (the Artist) was what I would label as a hipster or a neo-hipster. "Sot that is the way it is, a creator is so completely contemporary that he has the appearance of being ahead of his generation and to calm himself in his daily living he wishes to live with the things in the daily life of the past, he does not wish to live as contemporary as the contemporaries who do not poignantly feel being contemporary. This sounds complicated but it is very simple" (Stein, 31-32).
I also saw in Stein a personal goal of mine as regards to writing and Picasso as my example. "Picasso was possessed by the necessity of emptying himself, of emptying himself completely, of always emptying himself, he is so full of it that all his existence is the repetition of a complete emptying, he must empty himself, he can never empty himself of being Spanish, but he can empty himself of what he has created. So every one says that he changes but really it is not that, he empties himself and the moment he has completed emptying himself he must recommence emptying himself, he fills himself up again so quickly" (Stein, 32-33). I too, am 'so full of it' (Ha), but in seriousness, I have so much energy and so many stories locked in my head and half written out, that I must find a way of emptying myself. I am not concerned that I cannot fill myself back up again quickly, but I must find the drive to empty myself completely and finish some work.
Another fascinating little line made me think hard about knowledge. "Remembered things are not things seen, therefore they are not things known" (Stein, 35). Stein was relating this to Picasso particularly, but it struck me as one who is interested in epistemology. I don't know where to go with it, but it struck me on some level.
Being as I am, currently fascinated with the surrealists and Stein having been at least connected to the surrealists, I found her differentiating between Picasso and the Surrealists fascinating. Picasso was in a period where he was not painting, but only drawing. "During the summer of 1933 he made his only surrealist drawings. Surrealism could console him a little, but not really. The surrealists still see things as every one sees them, they complicate them in a different way but the vision is that of every one else, in short the complication is the complication of the twentieth century but the vision is that of the nineteenth century. Picasso only sees something else, another reality. Complications are always easy but another vision than that of all the world is very rare. That is why geniuses are rare, to complicate things in a new way that is easy, but to see the things in a new way that is really difficult, everything prevents one, habits, schools, daily life, reason, necessities of daily life, indolence, everything prevents one, in fact there are very few geniuses in the world" (Stein, 43). Firstly, this shows what high-esteem Stein gave Picasso. While I find Picasso to be incredible, I personally find Dali to be my favorite artist. Hence, I have a bent towards surrealists. But, it's an interesting way of looking at surrealism as to say they see the world as it is and then work to complicate it.
As I said, Stein tended to repeat herself and sort of weave back and forth throughout the book, but these are the Picasso periods I gathered from her interpretation:
1. The influence of Lautrec (first visit to Paris)
2. The Blue Period (in Barcelona)
3. Rose period
4. The beginning struggle for cubism
5. African
6. Intermediary
7. Real Cubism - a rather green period (what that means I don't know)
8. Grey Period
9. Calligraphy
10. Naturalistic
Stein makes an interesting distinction between the painter and the writer - "After all the egoism of a painter is not at all the egoism of a writer, there is nothing to say about it, it is not. No." (Stein, 46). All I could think of is my own egoism and its comparison to my brothers...
She also made an interesting point about a dry period for Picasso. "Two years of not working. In a way Picasso liked it, it was one responsibility the less, it is nice not having responsibilities, it is like the soldiers during a war, a war is terrible, they said, but during a war one has no responsibility, neither for death, nor for life. So these two years were like that for Picasso, he did not work, it was not for him to decide every moment what he saw, no, poetry for him was something to be made during rather bitter meditations, but agreeably enough, in a cafe" (Stein, 46). I just thought that imagery was rather funny.
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