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    Picasso
    Picasso
    Picasso
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Picasso

    By Gertrude Stein

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    For more than a generation, Gertrude Stein's Paris home at 27 rue de Fleurus was the center of a glittering coterie of artists and writers, one of whom was Pablo Picasso. In this intimate and revealing memoir, Stein tells us much about the great man (and herself) and offers many insights into the life and art of the 20th century's greatest painter.
    Mixing biological fact with artistic and aesthetic comments, she limns a unique portrait of Picasso as a founder of Cubism, an intimate of Appollinaire, Max Jacob, Braque, Derain, and others, and a genius driven by a ceaseless quest to convey his vision of the 20th century. We learn, for example, of the importance of his native Spain in shaping Picasso's approach to art; of the influence of calligraphy and African sculpture; of his profound struggle to remain true to his own vision; of the overriding need to empty himself of the forms and ideas that welled up within him.
    Stein's close relationship with Picasso furnishes her with a unique vantage point in composing this perceptive and provocative reminiscence. It will delight any admirer of Picasso or Gertrude Stein; it is indispensable to an understanding of modern art.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateJun 8, 2012
    ISBN9780486136523
    Picasso
    Author

    Gertrude Stein

    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American novelist and poet. Born in Pennsylvania, in 1903 she immigrated to France, where she would live for the rest of her life. The home on the Left Bank of Paris that she shared with her partner, Alice B. Toklas, became a cultural hub as young artists and writers began to gather there. As her salon rose to prominence, Stein befriended several expatriate authors living in Paris, including Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Stein has been credited with coining the term the lost generation to describe this group of writers. She died in France in 1946. 

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      This is the first of Gertrude Stein's work I have read. You can definitely feel the intention that quite possibly influenced Hemingway's style, but I can't help thinking that Stein was one of those many intelligent people who cannot write very well. If anything, I shall probably remember her classification of Picasso's various periods simply through her repetition. It is a very quick read expedited by the various useful pictures of Picasso's work and a handful of photographs. Nonetheless, I doubt I would have bothered to read this if the subject matter wasn't of interest and Stein had not been a part of Hemingway's early development.
    • 4/5
      I don't love Gertrude Stein, but this little book at least accomplishes what any book on an artist or writer should do: deepen your appreciation of and heighten your interest in the subject. The account of Picasso's life is unabashedly personal, and the main source of "information" is Stein's own relationship with Picasso, and her own judgements of his work and its meaning. The generalizations about European nations, the repeated claims that "it was only natural for Picasso to do X" because he was he was a Spaniard, the somewhat dismissive attitude towards other artists of the period--if you can just let this wash over you, take them as simply idiosyncratic musings, an offering of a perspective, then they will be, if not charming, at least tolerable. At any rate, I imagine these things are what make some people find Stein charming. The claim that, e.g., the 17th century had less reason than the 16th, and was therefore more splendid just strikes me as lazy and uninteresting. But anyway back to Stein on Picasso. She writes early in the book that for Picasso, faces were as old as the world. Elsewhere she relates an overheard conversation in which a woman suggests she finds portraits more interesting than still lifes because she knows what fruits and plants are, but doesn't know what humans are. Episodes like these make the book more than worth the short amount of time it takes to read it.

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    Picasso - Gertrude Stein

    DOVER BOOKS ON FINE ART

    BEARDSLEY’S LE MORTE DARTHUR: SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS, AUBREY BEARDSLEY. (0-486-41795-6)

    WILLIAM BLAKE’S DIVINE COMEDY ILLUSTRATIONS: 102 FULL-COLOR PLATES, WILLIAM BLAKE. (0-486-46429-6)

    BLAKE’S WATER-COLOURS FOR THE POEMS OF THOMAS GRAY: WITH COMPLETE TEXTS, WILLIAM BLAKE. (0-486-40944-9)

    CHAGALL DRAWINGS: 43 WORKS, MARC CHAGALL. (0-486-41222-9)

    DEGAS DRAWINGS OF DANCERS, EDGAR DEGAS. (0-486-40698-9)

    AN EDWARDIAN BESTIARY: 87 COLOR PLATES BY MAURICE & EDWARD J. DETMOLD, MAURICE DETMOLD AND EDWARD J. DETMOLD. EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEFF A. MENGES. (0-486-46877-1)

    THE DORÉ BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS, GUSTAVE DORÉ. (0-486-23004-X)

    THE DORÉ GALLERY: His 120 GREATEST ILLUSTRATIONS, GUSTAVE DORÉ. EDITED BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON. (0-486-0160-X)

    KIOWA AND PUEBLO ART: WATERCOLOR PAINTINGS BY NATIVE AMERICAN ARTISTS, DOVER. (0-486-46441-5)

    THE COMPLETE ENGRAVINGS, ETCHINGS AND DRYPOINTS OF ALBRECHT DÜRER, ALBRECHT DÜRER. (0-486-22851-7)

    GREAT SELF-PORTRAITS, EDITED BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON. (048642168-6)

    GREAT ANIMAL DRAWINGS AND PRINTS, EDITED BY CAROL. BELANGER GRAFTON. (0-486-44830-4)

    GREAT DRAWINGS OF WOMEN: FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, SELECTED BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON. (0-486-44606-9)

    GREAT DRAWINGS OF NUDES: 45 WORKS, EDITED BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON. (0-486-42766-8)

    HOLBEIN PORTRAIT DRAWINGS. HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER. (0-486-24937-9)

    GRAPHIC WORKS OF MAX KLINGER, MAX KLINGER. (0-486-23437-1)

    JAPANESE WOODBLOCK FLOWER PRINTS. TANIGAMI KÔNAN. (0-486-46442-3)

    LEONARDO’S ANATOMICAL DRAWINGS, LEONARDO DA VINCI. (0-486-43862-7)

    LEONARDO ON ART AND THE ARTIST. LEONARDO DA VINCI. (0-486-42166-X)

    LEONARDO DRAWINGS, LEONARDO DA VINCI. (0-486-23951-9)

    THE SUN, THE IDEA & STORY WITHOUT WORDS: THREE GRAPHIC NOVELS, FRANS MASEREEL. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID A. VERONA. (0-486-47169-1)

    POE ILLUSTRATED, SELECTED AND EDITED BY JEFF A. MENGES. (0-486-45746-X)

    VISIONS OF CAMELOT: GREAT ILLUSTRATIONS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS COURT, SELECTED AND EDITED BY JEFF A. MENAGES. (0-486-46816-X)

    ONCE UPON A TIME . . . A TREASURY OF CLASSIC FAIRY TALE ILLUSTRATIONS, SELECTED AND EDITED BY JEFF A. MENGES. (0-486-46830-5)

    MICHELANGELO LIFE DRAWINGS, MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI. (0-486-23876-8)

    MIRÓ LITHOGRAPHS, JOAN MIRÓ. (0-486-24437-7)

    PICASSO LINE DRAWINGS AND PRINTS, PABLO PICASSO. (0-486-24196-3)

    WILLY POGÁNY REDISCOVERED, WILLY POGÁNY. SELECTED AND EDITED BY JEFF A. MENGES. (0-486-47046-6)

    RACKHAM’S COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS FOR WAGNER’S RING, ARTHUR RACKHAM. (0-486-23779-6)

    THE ARTHUR RACKHAM TREASURY: 86 FULL-COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS, ARTHUR RACKHAM. SELECTED AND EDITED BY JEFF A. MENGES. (O-486-44685-9)

    THE LIFE OF CHRIST IN WOODCUTS, JAMES REID. (0-486-46884-4)

    THE COMPLETE ETCHINGS OF REMBRANDT: REPRODUCED IN ORIGINAL SIZE, REMBRANDT. (0-486-28181-7)

    SEE EVERY DOVER BOOK IN PRINT AT WWW.DOVERPUBLICATIONS.COM

    1 STILL-LIFE, MA JOLIE (1914)

    This Dover edition, first published in 1984, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by B. T. Batsford Ltd, London, in 1938. Plates 1, 2, 7, 21, 22, 29, 34 and 61, originally reproduced in color, are here reproduced in black and white.

    Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

    Stein, Gertrude, 1874-1946.

    Picasso.

    Reprint. Originally published: London : B.T Batsford, 1938.

    Includes index.

    1. Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973. I. Title.

    ND553.P5S8 1984

    759.4

    84-5934

    9780486136523

    Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

    24715518

    www.doverpublications.com

    Table of Contents

    DOVER BOOKS ON FINE ART

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    PICASSO

    INDEX

    A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST

    LINES AND STARS

    Drawing in Pure Calligraphy (1923)

    2 LES PAUVRES : Water Colour (1902)

    PICASSO

    PAINTING in the nineteenth century was only done in France and by Frenchmen, apart from that, painting did not exist, in the twentieth century it was done in France but by Spaniards.

    In the nineteenth century painters discovered the need of always having a model in front of them, in the twentieth century they discovered that they must never look at a model. I remember very well, it was between 1904-1908, when people were forced by us or by themselves to look at Picasso’s drawings that the first and most astonishing thing that all of them and that we had to say was that he had done it all so marvellously as if he had had a model but that he had done it without ever having had one. And now the young painters scarcely know that there are models. Everything changes but not without a reason.

    When he was nineteen years old Picasso came to Paris, that was in 1900, into a world of painters who had completely learned everything they could from seeing at what they were looking. From Seurat to Courbet they were all of them looking with their eyes and Seurat’s eyes then began to tremble at what his eyes were seeing, he commenced to doubt if in looking he could see. Matisse too began to doubt what his eyes could see. So there was a world ready for Picasso who had in him not only all Spanish painting but Spanish cubism which is the daily life of Spain.

    His father was professor of painting in Spain and Picasso wrote painting as other children wrote their a b c. He was born making drawings, not the drawings of a child but the drawings of a painter. His drawings were not of things seen but of things expressed, in short they were words for him and drawing always was his only way of talking and he talks a great deal.

    Physically Picasso resembles his mother whose name he finally took. It is the custom in Spain to take the name of one’s father and one’s mother. The name of Picasso’s father was Ruiz, the name of his mother was Picasso, in the Spanish way he was Pablo Picasso y Ruiz and some of his early canvases were signed Pablo Ruiz but of course Pablo Picasso was the better name, Pablo Picasso y Ruiz was too long a name to use as a signature and he commenced almost at once to sign his canvases Pablo Picasso.

    The name Picasso is of Italian origin, probably originally they came from Genoa and the Picasso family went to Spain by way of Palma de Mallorca. His mother’s family were silversmiths. Physically his mother like Picasso is small and robust with a vigorous body, dark-skinned, straight not very fine nearly black hair, on the other hand Picasso always used to say his father was like an Englishman of which both Picasso and his father were proud, tall and with reddish hair and with almost an English way of imposing himself:

    The only children in the family were Picasso and his younger sister. He made when he was fifteen years old oil portraits of her, very finished and painted like a born painter.

    3 GIRL WITH BARE FEET (1895)

    4 HARLEQUIN AND MATCHES (1901)

    Picasso was born in Malaga the 25th of October 1881 but he was educated almost entirely in Barcelona where his father until almost the end of his life was professor of painting at the academy of Fine Arts and where he lived until his death, his mother continued living there with his

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