The Self Portraits Of Gertrude Stein And Pablo Picaso

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

the conversation of Paris’ elite intellectuals. It was not until Picasso began his portrait of Gertrude Stein that their relationship began to flourish.
Over ninety sittings brought Stein to Bateau Lavoir to be Picasso’s first live model in years. Rodenbeck in her essay entitled “Insistent Presence in Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein” observed that,
Stein was upper middle class, a trained scientist, a non-practicing Jew, a lesbian, over-educated, American and, in 1905, shy with accented French; Picasso, by contrast, was bohemian, a lapsed but highly superstitious Catholic, vigorously heterosexual, self-education, and a Spaniard with accented French. But their attraction was immediate. (4)
Hobhouse writes, “Both were direct, a little rough with company, greedy, childish in their enthusiasms and petulant in their dislikes. . . . And both, at the time, were beginning to be convinced they were geniuses” (68). They experienced the same events and people in Paris prior to and ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

drawings and paintings” (Stein 38).
Stein, in her book Picasso, repeatedly reminds the reader of the similarities between Spaniards and Americans. She writes, “ . . . Spaniards and Americans . . . have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world knows it, not even when they see it. In fact, reality for them is not real and that is why there are skyscrapers and American literature and Spanish painting and literature” (18). This perfectly sets the stage for her double feature. In her descriptions of his cubist movement, Stein describes her forging of a new style of writing; in her explanations of his simple shapes and ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: