Verified Document

Gertrude Stein And Pablo Picasso Term Paper

Gertrude Stein's Personal Vision Of Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein's novel Picasso shows the engagement of a great literary artist with that of a great artist of the canvas. It melds Stein's forceful, direct, and spare prose with the images of Picasso and images of the artists that inspired his work. Stein hoped to create images with her words, of childlike sparseness and clarity, a similar aim, she states, of Picasso's art. Thus, her book is both illustrative, in the sense that it shows a titanic author of letters grappling with the similar implications of the 'plastic' arts in the modern world, though also rather biased, given that Stein's ego as an author occasionally causes her to see her own artistic aims in the artistic works of Picasso.

Stein states that Picasso rendered himself through the bodies of other individuals, creating not a visual exhibition of prostitutes in his first foray into cubism, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907, but rather a text of his inner self and life. But Stein's tendency to look into a mirror rather into Picasso's own work can be seen in her stress upon repetition in this and other parts of Picasso's collective works. Stein's own use of the literary technique of repetition was extremely effective. It is true that Picasso did make use of similar shapes and images in this first cubist work. He also used reoccurring motifs of color, as evidenced in the paintings of the blue and rose periods that form the focus of a number of Stein's works upon the artist, as well as the browns and grays of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Picasso also was fond of looking at repeatedly returning to subjects whom he had relationships with, such as his later series of "Dora" portraits, a commonality of Stein, whose most famous work is...

Toklas, a woman who made a frequent 'appearance' in Stein's literary works.
But repetition as an artistic technique is really only evidenced in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in shapes used to portray the women. No singular individual comes to the focus. Only the repetitive 'triangularity' of the female structures is in evidence. But even though the work may be structured around relatively simple and similar shapes, the overall effect upon the viewer is not repetitive, unlike the effect of Stein's prose. Rather the effect is of a harsh and angular world. Stein's prose, with its use of similar phrase structures and vocabulary, does strike the reader as repetitive. Stein's repetition might be better compared to the work of another artist, that of Andy Warhol, whom once said, upon the sight of a repeated image, better and emptier one feels. Picasso's work is more asymmetrical in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and leaves the viewer feeling anything but empty.

However, Stein's analysis of Picasso cannot be completely dismissed, particularly as she brings to the forefront a number of factors about Picasso's background that might have been otherwise lost, given the increasingly international view of this formative artist. For instance, Stein stresses the Spanish aspect and influence upon Picasso's art. The return to the artist's native Spain, she says, spawned the tones of his 'blue' period. The monotony or repetition of the tones of Spain and the blue period she sees as an enrichment of Picasso's art and a spawn of his innovations of cubism, which required a level of self-examination the comparatively bright tones of France and Picasso's rose period did not fully bring forth from the artist's soul. The…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Picasso, Pablo. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907. MoMa collection accessed on December 15, 2003 at http://www.moma.org/

Stein, Gertrude. Picasso. Dover Publishers, 1984.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Life and Works of Pablo Picasso
Words: 1154 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Pablo Picasso is noted by the majority of critics as the most important influence of twentieth century art (Picasso pp). Art critic Robert Hughes once stated, "To say that Pablo Picasso dominated Western art in the 20th century is, by now, the merest commonplace" (Picasso pp). Long before his fiftieth birthday, Picasso had become "the very prototype of the modern artist as public figure ... No painter before him had

Picasso Pablo Picasso Was a
Words: 2957 Length: 10 Document Type: Research Paper

Classicism and surrealism After the World War 1, neoclassical style of artwork was seen by Picasso. The paintings done by Picasso in this period were akin to the work done of Ingres and Raphael. It was in the 1930s when harlequin was substituted with minotaur. His utilization of minotaur was partially due to his connection with surrealists, who even now and then made use of it as their representation. During the Spanish

Portraits of Gertrude Stein an
Words: 938 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

250). At this point in his career, Picasso could represent Stein quite well. The style is neither abstract nor entirely avant-garde: it is reflective, slightly off-kilter, but encompassing of the subject and her character. Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein, therefore, must be considered the better of the two, even if Rose's appears to be the more dynamic. Rose was an imitator, not exactly an orginal -- but then, could the

Gertude Stein. Gertrude Stein It Is Difficult
Words: 1862 Length: 6 Document Type: Research Paper

Gertude Stein. Gertrude Stein It is difficult to think of 1920's Paris without recalling Gertrude Stein. A friend to some of the most prominent artists and writers of the 20th century, Stein is not only known for her own accomplished writing contributions, but also for her personal lifestyle. Gertrude Stein was born in 1874 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She attended Radcliffe from 1893-1897, where she was a student of William James. One day

Modernism That Interests You Gertrude Stein and
Words: 992 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

Modernism That Interests You Gertrude Stein and Modernism Gertrude Stein had been an American feminist, poet, playwright, writer, as well as, the means in the growth and expansion of modernism western art and prose. However, she had spent the majority of her life in France. If the term "modernism" stands for the need of an individual refusing earlier customs, as well as, by designing personal methods, creating compositions which have been

Picasso: The Image of Modern Man Picasso
Words: 1523 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Picasso: The Image of Modern Man Picasso came to Paris from Malaga, Spain, a town known for its bull-fighters. Picasso in his less experimental days he depicted these bull fights in a number of pencil sketches that captured the flare, dynamism and thrill of the arena. However, he never content to simply reflect in a realistic way the world around him. Society was changing the very first years of the 20th

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now