The Modernist World
The Arts in an Age of Global Confrontation
THINKING AHEAD
How would you define modernism, and how do Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, and Expressionism reflect its
spirit?
What were the effects of the Great War on the Western imagination?
f the rhythm of life had long been regulated by the physiology of a man or a horse walking, or, on a sailing voyage,
hy the vagaries of weather (calm, storm, and wind direction), after 1850 it was regulated by the machine- first by
the steam eng ine and the train; then, in 1897, by the automobile; and then, finally, hy the airplane. At the dawn of the
twentieth century, the world was in motion. As early as 1880,
one Fn.: nch aJverti~ ing company boasLeJ that it could post
a hillhoard ad in 35,937 municipalities in five days' timea billboard of the kind advertising Astra Construction in
The Cardiff Team (Fig. 14.1), a painting by Robert Delaunay
[duh-lawn-AY] (1885-1941). The painting depicts the men
of the Cardiff (Wales) rugby team leaping up at a rugby ball
in the center of the painting. They represent the internationalization of sport; the first modern Olympic Games had
taken place in 1896 in Athens, followed by the 1900 Games
in Paris, staged in conjunction with the Exposition Universelle, and rugby was a medal sport in each. The rugby ball is
framed by the famous Grande Roue de Paris. Built for the
1900 Exposition Universelle, at 100 meters (328 feet) in
height, it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, surpassing by 64 feet the original Ferris wheel, built for Chicago's
Columbian Exposition in 1893, and although it would be
demolished in 1920, the Grande Roue remained the world's
tallest Ferris wheel until it was surpassed by three Japanese
Ferris wheels in the 1990s. On July 1, 1913, the year that
Delaunay painted The Cardiff Team, a signa l was broadcast
I
from the top of the Eiffel Tower, seen towering over Delaunay's work, estab lishing worldwide Standard Time. By 1903,
Orvi lle Wright had been airborne 59 seconds, and by 1908,
he would fly for 91 minutes. A year later, Bleriot crossed the
English Channel by plane (though it would be another 18
years until Charles Lindbergh would cross the Atlantic by
air). The airp lane in Delaunay's painting is a "box-kite" design built in a Paris suburb beginning in 1907 by the Voisin
brothers, Gabrie l and Charles, the first commercial airplane
manufacturers in Europe. Finally, the signboard "MAGIC"
refers to Magic City, an enormous dance-hall near the Eiffel
Tower. Delaunay's Cardiff Team captures the pulse of Paris in
the first decades of the twentieth century, and the heartbeat
of modern life.
Delaunay called his work "Simultanism," a term derived
from Michel Eugene Chevreul's 1839 book on color The
Principle of Harmony and Contrast of Colors-in the original
French title the word translated as "harmony" is simultaneebut the term signified more than just an approach to color
theory. The name referred to the immediacy of vision, and
suggested that in any given instant, an infinite number of
states of being existed in the speed and motion of modern
life. Everything was in motion, including the picture itself.
The sti ll photograph suddenly found itself animated in
the moving picture, first in 1895 by the Brothers Lumiere,
in Paris, and then after 1905, when the Nickelodeon, the
first motion-picture theater in the world, opened its doors
<4 Fig. 14.1 Robert Delaunay, The Cardiff Team. 1913. Oil on canvas, 10'83/s'' x 6'10" . Musee d'Art Moderne
de Ia Ville de Paris. Everything in the painting seems to rise into the sky as if, for Oelaunay, the century is
"taking off" much like the airplane. Even the construction company's name. "Astra," refers to the stars.
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439
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 1925, Russian fi lmmaker
THE RISE OF MODERNISM IN THE ARTS
Sergei Eisenstein would cram 155 separate shots into a
In other words, over the course of the last two decades of the
four-minute sequence of his film The Battleship Potemkin-a
nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, the
shot every 1.6 seconds. In 1900, France had produced 3,000
way we understood the physical universe radica lly changed.
automobiles; by 1907, it was producing 30,000 a year. The
The arts responded. In painting, those who fo llowed upon the
technological advances represented by the automobile were
Impressionist generation-the Post- Impress ionists, as they
closely connected to the development of the internal comwere soon known-saw themselves as inventing a new future
bustion engine, pneumatic tires, and, above all , the rise of
for painting, one that reflected the spirit of innovation that
the assembly line. After all, building 30,000 automobiles a
defined modernity. In Paris, the studio of Spanish -born Pablo
year required an efficiency and speed of production unlike
Picasso [pee-KAH-soh] (1871-1973) was quickly recognized
any ever before conceived. Henry Ford (1863- 1947), the
by artists and intellectuals as the cente r of artistic innovaAmerican automobile maker, attacked the problem. Ford
tion in the new century. From around Europe and America,
asked Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), the inventor of "scienartists flocked to see his work, and they carried his spirit tific management," to determine the exact speed at which
and the spirit of French painting generally- back with them
the assembly line should move and the exact motions workto Ita ly, Germany, and America. New art movements-new
ers should use to perform their duties; in 1908, assembly- line
"isms," including Delaunay's Simultanism-succeeded one
production as we know it was born.
another in rapid fire. Picasso's work also enco uraged radical
Amid all this speed and motion, the world also suddenly
approaches to poetry and to music, where the disco rd ant ,
seemed a less stable and secure p lace. Discoveries in scisometimes violent distortions of his paintings fo und the ir
ence and physics confirmed this. In 1900, German physicist
expression in sound.
Max Planck (1858-194 7) proposed the theory of matter and
energy known as quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics,
Post-Impressionist Painting
the fundamental particles are unknowable, and are only hypothetical things represented by mathematics. Furthermore, the
Among the Post-Impressio nists we re Pa ul Ceza nne, Pau l
ve ry technique of measuring these pheno mena necessari ly
Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, all of whom exh ibited at varalters their behavior. Faced with the fact that light appeared
ious Impressionist shows, but rather than creating Impresto travel in absolutely contradictory ways, as both particles
sionist works that captured the optical effects of light and
and waves, depending upon how one measured it, in 1913,
atmosphere and the fleeting qualities of sensory experience,
Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) bui lt on quantum
they sought to capture something tra nscende nt in the ir
phys ics to propose a new theory of complementarity: two
act of vision, something that captured the essence of thei r
statements, apparently contradictory, might at any moment be
subject.
.
equally true. At the very end of the
nineteenth century, in Cambridge,
England, ] . ] . Thompson detected
the existence of separate components in the previously indivisible
atom. He called them "electrons,"
a nd by 1911, Ernest Rutherford
had introduced a new model of the
atom-a small, positively charged
nucleus containing most of the
a to m's mass a round which electrons continuously orbit. Suddenly
matter itself was understood to be
continually in motion. Meanwhile,
in 1905, Albert Einstein had published his theory of relativity and
by 1915 had produced the General Principles of Relativity, with its
model of the non-Euclidean, fourdimensional space-time continuum.
Between 1895 and 1915, the traditional physical universe had literFig. 14.2 Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. 1884. Oil on canvas. 5'1Hf' x 10'114" Helen Birch
ally been transformed-and it was
Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.224. Combination of quadrant captures F1 , F2, G1 . G2. Photograph © 2006. The
not a universe of entities available Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved. Capuchin monkeys like th e one held on a leash by the woman on the right
to the human eye.
were a popular pet in 1880s Paris.
~View
440
the Closer Look for Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Ja ffe o n myartslab.com
CHAPTER 14
The Modernist World
Pointillism: Seurat and the Harmonies of Color One of the
most talented of the Post- Impressionist painters was Georges
Seurat [suh- RAH] (1859-91), who exh ibited h is masterpiece, A Sunday on La Grand]atte, in 1886 when he was 27
years old (Fig. 14.2). It depicts a Sunday crowd of Parisians
enjoying the weather on the island of La Grand ]atte in
the Seine River just northeast of the city. The subject matter is typically Impressionist, but it lacks that style's sense of
spontaneity and the immediacy of its brushwork. Instead, La
Grand ]atte is a carefully controlled, scientific app lication of
tiny dots of color-pointilles [pwahn-TEE], as Seurat called
them-and his method of painting became known as pointillism [POIN-tih-lizm] to some, and neo-impressionism to
others.
In setting his "points" of color side by side across the
canvas, Seurat determined that color cou ld be mixed, as he
put it, in "gay, calm, or sad" combinations. Lines extending
upward could also reflect these same feelings, he exp lained,
imparting a cheerful tone, as do warm and luminous colors
of red, orange, and yellow. Horizontal lines that balance dark
and light, warmth and coolness, create a sense of calm. Lines
reaching in a downward direction and the dark, cool hues of
green, blue, and violet evoke sadness.
With this symbo lic theory of co lor in mind, we can see
much more in Seurat's La Grand ]atte than simply a Sunday
crowd enjoy ing a day at the park. There are 48 people of various ages depicted, including soldiers, families, couples, and
singles, some in fashionable attire, others in casua l dress. A
range of social classes is present as well, illustrating the mixture of diverse people o n the city's day of leisure. Although
overall the painting balances its lights and darks and the
horizontal dominates, thus creating a sense of calm, all three
groups in the foreground shadows are bathed in the melancholy tones of blue, violet, and green. With few exceptionsa running child, and behind her a couple-almost everyone
in the painting is looking either straight ahead or downward.
Even the tails of the pets turn downward. This solemn feature
is further heightened by the toy-soldier rigidity of the figures.
Seurat's painting suggests more than it portrays. As one critic
of the time wrote of La Grande ]atte, "one understands then
the rigidity of Parisian leisure, tired and stiff, where even recreation is a matter of striking poses."
Symb oli c Color: Van Gogh Seurat's influence on French
painting was profound. Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh
(1853-90), studied Seurat's paintings while living in Paris in
1886-87 and experimented extensively with Seurat's co lor
combinations and pointillist technique, which extended
even to his drawings, as a means to create a rich textura l
surface.
Van Gogh was often overcome with intense and unco n trollable emotions, an attribute that played a key ro le in
the development of his unique artistic style. Profound ly
committed to discovering a universal harmony in which
all aspects of life were united through art, van Gogh found
~View
Seu rat's emph asis on contrasting colors appealing. It became
anoth er ingredient in his synthesis of techniques. He began
to app ly comp lementary colors in richly painted zones using
dashes and strokes that were much larger than Seurat's
/)Ointilles.
Co lor, in van Gogh's paintings, becomes symbolic,
charged with feelings. To viewers at the time, the dashes of
thickly painted color, a technique known as impasto, seemed
thrown onto the canvas as a haphazard and unrefined mess.
And yet, the staccato rhythms of this brushwork seemed to
van Gogh himse lf deep ly autobiographic, capturing almost
stroke by stroke the pulse of his own volatile personality. A
pa int ing like Portrait of Patience Escalier [ess-kah-lee-AY] is
not just a portrait, but also the embodiment of van Gogh's
feeling for nature (Fig. 14.3). Escalier's blue coat, though
trad it ional peasant garb, evokes the deep blue skies of the
south of France, and the orange background reproduces what
van Gogh described as "the furnace of the height of harvest
time ... orange colors flashing like lightning, vivid as red-hot
iron." He further explained that" ... although it does not pretend to be the image of a red sunset, [it] may nevertheless
give a suggestion of one." Through color, van Gogh calls to
Fig. 14.3 Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Patience Escalier. August 1889.
Oil on canvas. 27 Ys" X 22". Private Collection/Photo© Lefevre Fine Art. Ltd.
London(The Bridgeman Art Library Van Gogh would comment on the peasants
in the south of France. "The natives are like Zola's poor peasants, innocent and
gentle beings."
the Closer Look for Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jaffe on myartslab.com
CHAPTER 14
The Modernist World
441
Fig. 14.4 Vincent van Gogh, The
Starry Night. 1889. Oil on canva s,
28%" x 36!4'' . Acquired through the
Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (4721941) Digital
Image ©The Museum of Modern Art/
Licensed by Scala/ Art Resource. New
York. Saint-Remy, where van Gogh
painted this work, lies at the foot of
a small range of mountains between
Aries and Aix-en-Provence . This part
of France is plagued in the winter
months by the mistral. strong winds
that blow day after day out of the
Alps down the Rhone River valley. The
furious swirls of van Gogh's sky and
the blowing cypress trees suggest that
he might be representing this wind
known to drive people mad. in contrast
to the harmonies of the painting's color
scheme.
View the Closer Look for
Vincent van Gogh 's The Starry
Night on myartslab.com
mind not just the landscape of southern France, but also the
enduring lifestyle and nobility of the peasants who live in it.
Van Gogh und erstood that in paintings like Portrait of
Patience Escalier, h e was ac tive ly aba ndo ning Impress io nism. In so do ing, he establi shed not only hi s signature style,
but also a vigorous and modern aesthetic sense. A s he wrote
while working on the painting:
W h at I lea rn ed in Pa ri s is lea vin g me a nd I am return ing to the ideas I had ... before I knew the impressionists.
A nd I sho uld not be surprised if th e im press ionists soo n
fin d fa ul t with my way of working . ... Beca use instead of
try ing to reproduce exac tl y wh at I h ave before my eyes,
I use colo r mo re a rbit ra ril y, in o rd e r to ex press mys elf
forc ibl y.
A lth o ugh hi s wo rk grew eve r bold er and mo re c rea tive
as the yea rs passed, van Gogh continued to suffer fro m the
emotional instability and depress ion that had tormented him
mos t of his adult life. In Decembe r 1888 , van G ogh's personal emotional turmoil reached a fever pitch when he sliced
off a section of his earlobe and presented it to an Aries prost itute as a present. Afte r a brief stay at an Aries hospital, he
was released , but by the e nd of Janu ary, the c ity received a
petit ion signed by 30 townspeople demanding his co mmittal.
In earl y May, he entered a mental h ospital in Saint-Re my,
not far fro m Aries, and there h e painted Starry Night, perhaps
442
CHAPTER 14
The Modernist World
his most famous co mpos itio n (Fig. 14.4 ). Here the swirling
cypresses (in which red and gree n lie h armonious ly side by
side ) and the rising church steep le unite earth and sky. Similarly, the orange and ye llow stars and moon unite with the
brightly lit windows of the to wn . Describing his th o ughts
about the painting in a letter to his bro ther, van Gogh wrote,
"Is it no t emotio n , the sincerit y of one's fee ling fo r nature,
that draws us?" But finally, in July 1890, afte r a nu mbe r of
stays in hospitals and asylums, he committed suic ide in the
fi elds outside Auvers-sur-Oise, where he was being treated by
Dr. Paul Gachet, who was the subj ect of seve ral of the great
artist's last portraits.
The Structure of Color: Cezanne O f a ll the Post- Impress ionists, Pa ul Cezanne [say-ZAHN] (1 839- 1906 ) was the only
o n e who co ntinu ed to paint en plein air. In t hi regard, he
remained an Impress ionist, and he continued to pa in t what
h e ca lled "optics." The duty of the pa inter, he sa id, was "to
give the image of what we see," but innocentl y, "forgetting
everything that h as appeared befo re." Since the Renaissance,
Western art had been dedicated to representing the world as
the eye sees it- that is, in terms of pe rspecti va l space. But
Cezanne realized that we see the world in far mo re complex
terms than just the retinal image before us. We see it th ro ugh
the multiple lenses of o ur lived experience. This mult iplicity
of viewpoints, or perspectives, is the do minant feature of Still
Fig. 14.5 Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Plaster Cast. ca. 1894. Oil on paper
on board, 26Y2" x 32W. The Samuel Courtauld Trust. Courtauld Institute of Art
Gallery. London. Cezanne's challenge to tradition is highlighted by the tension
between his radical approach to the representation of space and his inclusion.
at the heart of the painting. of a plaster cast of a seventeenth-century Cupid
sculpted .by Pierre Puget [poo-ZHAY] (1620-94).
Life with Plaster Cast (Fig. 14.5 ). Nothing in the composition is spatially stab le. Instead we wander through the small
space in the corner of Cezanne's studio just as the painter's
eye would do. His viewpoint constantly moves, contemplating its object from this angle, then that one. The result of
this vision is a representation of nature as a series of patches
of co lor that tend to flatten the surface of his paintings.
Note, for instance, how the fruit and onions on the table are
modeled by radical shifts in color rather than gradations from
light to dark (traditional chiaroscuro).
Cezann e returned to the same theme continually-particularly sti lllifes and Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain
ove rlookin g his native Aix-en-Provence [eks-ahn-prohVAHNSS] in the so uth of France (Fig. 14.6 ). ln the last
decade of his life, the mountain became something of an
obsess ion, as he climbed the hill behind his studio to paint it
day after day. He especia lly liked to paint after storms when
the air was clear and the colors of the landscape were at their
most sat urated and uniform intensity. Cezanne acknowledges the illusion of space in the mountain scene by means
of three bands of co lor. Patches of gray and black define the
foreground, green and ye llow-orange the middle ground, and
violets and blues the distant mountain and sky. Yet in each
of these areas, the predominant colors of the other two are
repeated-th e green brushstrokes of the middle ground in the
sky, for instance-all with a consistent intensity. The distant
co lors possess the same strength as those closest. Together
with the uniform size of Cezanne's brushstrokes-his patches
do not get smaller as they retreat into the distance-this use
of co lo r makes the viewer very aware of the surface qualities and structure of Cezanne's composition. It is this tension
between spatial perspectives and surface flatness that would
become one of the chief preoccupations of modern painting
in the forthcoming century.
Escape to Far Tahiti: Gauguin ln 1891,
the painter Paul Gauguin [g oh-GAN ]
(1848-1903) left France for the island of
Tahiti, part of French Polynesia, in the
South Pacific . A frustrated bus in essman
and father of five children, he had taken up
art with a rare dedication a decade earlier,
study ing with Camille Pissarro and Pau l
Cezanne. Gauguin was also a friend of van
Gogh, with whom he spent several months
painting in Aries during the Dutch artist's
most productive period. He had a lso been
inspired by the 1889 Exposition Universelle,
where indigenous peoples and ho usi ng from
Fig. 14.6 Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire.
1902-04. Oil on canvas, 28W x 363/,6" Photo Graydon
Wood. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The George W Elkins
Collection. 1936. E1936-1-1. Cezanne painted this from
the top of the steep hill known as Les Lauves. just north
of Aix-en-Provence but within walking distance of the city
center. He built his own studio on a plot of land halfway
up the hill, overlooking the city
CHAPTER 14
The Modernist World
443
Fig. 14.7 Paul Gauguin,
Mahana no atua (Day of the
God). 1894. Oil (possibly mixed
with wax) on canvas. 26%" x
355/s". The Art Institute of
Chicago. Helen Birch Bartlett
Memorial Collection (1926.198).
Photograph© 2007, The Art
Institute of Chicago. All Rights
Reserved. There is no record
of Gauguin ever exhibiting this
work. It was first exhibited at the
Boston Art Club in 1925.
around the world were di played. "I can buy a nat ive ho use,"
he wrote his friend Emile Bernard, "like those yo u saw a t
the World's Fair. Made of wood a nd dirt with a tha tch ed
roof." To othe r fr iends h e wrote, "I will go to Tahiti a nd I
hope to finish ou t my life there ... fa r from the European
struggle for money ... ab le to listen in the silence of beautiful tropical nights to the oft murmuring music of my heartbeats in loving harmony with the mysteri o us beings in my
entourage."
Gauguin's first trip to Ta hiti was n o t e verything he
dreamed it wou ld be, since by March 1892 he was penniless.
When he arrived back in France, he h ad painted 66 pictures
but had on ly four francs (about $ 12 today) to his name. He
spent the next two years en ergetica lly promoting his work
and writing an accou nt of his jo urney to Tahiti, entitled
Noa Noa (noa means "fragrant" o r "perfumed"). It is a fic tionalized version of his travels and bears little resemblance
to the details of his jo urney that h e honestly reco rded in
his letters. But Noa Noa was not meant to be true so much
as sensationa l, with its titillating story of the artist's liaison
with a 13-year-old Tahitian girl, Teh aman a, offered to him
by her family. He presents himse lf as a primitif. In French,
the wo rd /Jrimitif suggests the primal, original, or irreducible.
Gaugu in believed that "primitive" ways of thinking offered
an entry into the primal powers of the mind, and he considered his paintings visionary glimpses into the primal fo rces
of nature.
444
CHAPTER 14
The Modernist World
Gaug uin a rra n ged for two exh ibiti on at n Pari~ galle ry in November 1893 and anothe r in December 1894. He
ope ned a studi o of hi s own, painted olive green and a brilliant chrome yellow, and decorated it with paintings, tropical
plants, and exotic furnishings . He initiated a regular Thursday sa lo n where h e lectured o n his pa in tings and regaled
guests with stories of his travels, as we ll as playing music on a
range of instruments.
In this studio, he painted Mahana no atua (Day of the God)
of 1894 (Fig. 14.7). Based on idealized recollections of his
escape to Tahiti , the canvas consists of three zones. In the
top zo ne or background, figures carry food to a carved idol,
rep rese nting a native god, a musician plays as two women
dance, and two lovers embrace beside the statue of the deity.
Below, in the second zone, are three nude figures. The one to
the right assumes a fetal position suggestive of birth and fertility. The one to the left appears to be day dreaming or napping, possibly an image of reverie. The middle figure appears
to have just emerged from bathing in the water be low that
constitutes the third zone. She directs her gaze at the viewer
and, so, suggests a n uninhibited sex uality. The bottom,
watery zone is an irregular patchwo rk of color, an abstract
composition of se n suo us line and fluid shapes. As in van
Gogh's work, color is freed of its representational function to
become an almost pure expression of the artist's feelings.
Gauguin returned to Tahiti in June 1895 and never came
back to France, comp let ing nearly 100 paintings and over
400 woodcuts in the eight remaining years of his life. He
moved in 1901 to the remote island ofHivaoa [hee-vah-OHuh], in the Marquesas [mar-KAY-suz], where in the small village of Atuona [aht-uh- WOH-nuh] he built and decorated
what he called his House of Pleasure. Taking up with another
young girl, who like Tehamana gave birth to his child,
Gauguin alienated the small number of priests and colonial
French officials on the islands but attracted the interest and
friendship of many native Marquesans, who were fascinated
by his nonstop work habits and his colorful paintings. Having suffered for years from heart disease and syphilis, he died
quietly in Hivaoa in May 1903.
Pablo Picasso's Paris: At the Heart of the Modern
Picasso's Paris was centered at 13 rue Ravignon [rah-veenYOHN], at the Bateau-Lavoir [bah-TOH lah-VWAHR]
("Laundry Barge"), so nicknamed by the poet Max Jacob .
It was Picasso's studio from the spring of 1904 until October 1909, and he continued to store his paintings there until
September 1912. Anyone wanting to see his work would
have to climb the hill topped by the great white cathedral
of Sacre Coeur [sah-KRAY ker] in the Montmartre [mohnMART] quarter, beginning from the Place Pigalle [plahss peeGAHL], and finally climb the stairs to the great ramshackle
space, where the walls were piled deep with canvases). Or
they might see his work at the Saturday evening salons of
expatriate American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein
[stine] (1874-1946) at 27 rue de Fleurus [fler-OOS] behind
the Jardin du Luxembourg [zhar-DEHN due louks-emBOOR] on the Left Bank of the Seine. If you knew someone
who knew someone, you would be welcome enough. Many
Picassos h~ng on her walls, including his portrait of her,
painted in 1906 (Fig. 14.8).
In her book The AutobiograjJhy of Alice B. Toklas (1932)actually her own memoir disguised as that of her friend and
lifelong companion-Stein described the making of this picture in the winter of 1906 (Reading 14.1):
Fig. 14.8 Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein. 1906. Oil on canvas. H. 393/s.
W 32 in. (1 00 X 81.3 em). Image copyright© The Metropolitan Museum of
Art/Art Resource. NY Art© 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society
lARS). New York. According to Stein, in painting her portrait. "Picasso passed
[on] .. to the intensive struggle which was to end in Cubism."
the painting began. All of a sudden one day Picasso
painted out the whole head. I can't see you anymore
when I look, he said irritably, and so the picture was
left like that.
READING 14.1
from Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography
of Alice B. Toklas (1932)
Picasso had never had anybody pose for him since
he was sixteen years old. He was then twenty-four
and Gertrude had never thought of having her portrait
painted, and they do not know either of them how it
came about. Anyway, it did, and she posed for this portrait ninety times. There was a large broken armchair
where Gertrude Stein posed. There was a couch where
everybody sat and slept. There was a little kitchen chair
where Picasso sat to paint. There was a large easel
and there were many canvases. She took her pose,
Picasso sat very tight in his chair and very close to his
canvas and on a very small palette, which was of a
brown gray color, mixed some more brown gray and
Picasso actually finished the picture early the following fall,
painting her face in large, masklike masses in a style very different from the rest of the picture. No longer relying on the
visua l presence of the sitter before his eyes, Picasso painted
not his view of her, but his idea of her. When Alice B. Toklas
later commented that some people thought the painting did
not look like Stein, Picasso replied, "It will."
Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon In a way, the story of Gertrude Stein's portrait is
The Aggressive New Modern Art:
a parable for the birth of modern art. It narrates the shift in
painting from an optical art-painting what one sees-to
an imaginative construct-painting what one thinks about
what one sees. The object of painting shifts, in other words,
from the literal to the conceptual. The painting that most
thoroughly embodied this shift was Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
CHAPTER 14
The Modernist World
445