Questions and Answers

The book has arrived!

The book has arrived!

The book has arrived!

It has arrived. The book.

The book that is not a chair.

A chair that is not the book.

But the  book sitting there.

Chair.

So there.

With my attempt at Steinese, I am so happy to announce that the first shipment of GERTRUDE and ALICE and FRITZ and TOM has reached the U.S. shores from the printer in Singapore. (Actually they arrived by air freight, flying above the shores, with the larger shipment coming by sea and literally reaching our shores in Los Angeles in a few weeks on a ship named England.}

The book is beautifully printed and bound.

Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom by Hans Gallas Illustrations by Tom Hachtman

My previous post told the tale of how the book got to be and now will come the book’s marketing adventures!

If you have any favorite bookstores that should be stocking the book, let me know. I’m also planning events highlighting the book around the country and abroad in the next six months.  I’ll keep you posted on those here and on Facebook.

All ideas of people I should contact and places I should go are welcome.

You can order your copy (or copies) by clicking on the book‘s cover in the right column or going to gertrudeandalice.com/fritzandtom and the book will be on its way. Books are $19.99 for the 72 page hard cover edition with a dust jacket and can be paid for through PayPal.

Once the final shipment arrives, I’ll also be setting up purchasing through amazon.com.

One box of books has actually made a return trip across the Pacific to my friend Jane Turner’s book shop, the Gertrude and Alice Café Bookstore in Bondi Beach, Australia.

Gertrude and Alice Cafe Bookstore well-stocked

How fitting that the first bookstore in the world to stock the book is named after Our Ladies of Rue de Fleurus.

Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom would certainly chime in to agree.

Wasn’t it Lady Macbeth who said “What’s done is done,” at some point either before or after that bloody dagger scene? (Just checked, it’s after the dagger scene – that would be logical !)

...the deed is done!

Well, I’ve done it too and feel a bit like a parent dropping off his first child at kindergarten hoping for the best as tears well-up and Miss Crabtree leads the young one away to join the other rascals.

Miss Crabtree in charge

So what is it that’s been done – the children’s picture book which I’ve been working on for…let’s just say many,many years is on its way to a printer in Singapore!

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It’s another September 9th and those in the know will realize another anniversary is upon us!

For lo and behold, 104 years ago today, Alice walked into that room at Michael Stein’s in Paris and there she was the soon to be love of her life speaking through that coral brooch on her corduroy robe!  And as I and many, many other Stein folk have said or written: “The rest is history!”

As I was thinking about what to post for this year’s anniversary and what photograph to use, glanced around our dining room and there on one of the buffets were two collaged portrait-plates. Portrait-plates, you ask?  Yes, plates on which some early 1960′s Hausfrau pasted scrapes of felt and lace and other do-dads to create a wedding shower gift. (Sometimes the portraits are painted on the plates, though the collaged ones are more desirable.)  The  plates were to represent the bride and groom, with their names usually inscribed on each of the plates.  For some reason known only to someone like  the craft editor at Good Housekeeping magazine, the collaged portraits look like a couple from the not-so gay 1890′s not the 1960′s.  (You know the couple that would be singing “On a Bicycle Built for Two” on either the Lawrence Welk Show or Sing Along With Mitch during the somewhat Golden Age of mid-1960′s American television – Norma Zimmer and whoever. )

See what I mean:

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With all due respect to the musical The Sound of Music, one of whose songs contained lyrics bastardized in the title of this post, we must bid adieu to the Summer of Steins in San Francisco. Both exhibitions SEEING GERTRUDE STEIN: FIVE STORIES  at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and THE STEINS COLLECT: MATTISE,  PICASSO AND THE PARISIAN AVANT-GARDE at SFMOMA end tomorrow, September 6th.  And though both of them will be travelling, the first to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC from October 14th – January 22nd, 2012 and the other one to both Paris at the Grand Palais from October 3rd  -  January 16, 2012  and  then the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York  from February 21 through June 3, 2012, the Summer of Steins in San Francisco will not be able to be replicated as the Fall, Winter or Spring of Steins in any of the other cities – this summer was just too special!

the movie Von Trapps bid their adieus!

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Today on the 65th anniversary of Gertrude Stein’s death pick up a rose or two and let’s remember…

One of the purposes of a blog is commenting on happenings in a timely manner.

Well, this morning before my GoogleAlert for Gertrude Stein even had a chance to send me any alerts, I got an e mail from a friend on the East Coast with this heading:

“Lesbians Booted from Gertrude Stein Exhibit – San Francisco…”

And why did a security guard try to get them to leave the Contemporary Jewish Museum…for defacing a painting? Pressing their noses against one of the Plexiglas vitrines?  Relishing an Alice B. Toklas treat while touring the show?

No, no, no…for holding hands!!!

"Semper fidelis," (detail) by Bruce Kellner, 1982

Word about this incident is apparently spreading like wildfire within the community of Stein fans, as well as in newspapers across the country. (One of my friends has proposed a “Hand-Holding, Sit-In” type of day at the museum.)

How can I not comment on this in a timely manner considering that many items from my collection are featured in the exhibition, which I hope this couple was able to view before they were so unconscionably treated!

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From time to time I’ve been asked whether I’ve read all of Gertrude Stein’s works and all of the other Stein-related books that I have in my collection. I must honestly say ‘No’ though I have heard of some Stein collectors who have read all of her works and also of some who supposedly have read none of her writings.

Every so often I pick up one of the books from my currently disarrayed collection to read it.  (Too many exhibitions have caused me to shuffle things from here to there and there to here, so to once again overuse Our Miss Stein’s quote: “There is no there there!”)

The other week I selected an almost 50 year old biography of the Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta,called THE COLLECTORS: DR. CLARIBEL AND MISS ETTA CONE by Barbara Pollack.

The Cone sisters with brother---NOT!

The Cones are hot right now because a number of their paintings are both in THE STEINS COLLECT exhibition at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and also in an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City through September. The title of this post was inspired by the headline of a review of the Jewish Museum show in the Jewish Daily Forward :

“Coneheads Conquer New York: A First-Rate Collection by Two Baltimore Sisters Goes on Display”

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In my children’s book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom, which I hope will soon reach the bookstores of the various museums where the Stein exhibitions are being held, the two young boys who visit rue de Fleurus encounter the atelier’s floor-to-ceiling paintings for the first time:

“Look at this really rambling room!” whispered Tom.  “There are masterful modern paintings floor to ceiling!  It looks like a museum!  I hate museums, everything in a museum is musty and moldy.”

Fritz pressed his nose against one of the paintings.  “This person has four flaming eyes and three thick ears and is not musty and moldy!”

Tom Hachtman's Fritz and Tom

I can assure you that there is also nothing musty or moldy at  The Steins Collect exhibition which opened last week at SFMOMA !

In the 25+ years that I’ve been obsessed with GertrudeandAlice I have had moments more extraordinary than the proverbial “aha!”  moments. I  would have to say that they are  more like  ”ah Stein!” moments!

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Last week I attended the two openings for the Seeing Gertrude Stein exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and this week will attend the opening celebration at SFMOMA’s The Steins Collect (see the previous post for all the details on the shows.)

Seeing Gertrude Stein is a must-see, not only for GertrudeandAlice fans, but also for anyone who wants to get to know them better. As is usually the case at openings, the crowds were too dense to really see the exhibition (600 people had RSVP’d for the 2nd opening), so in the next few weeks I’ll be going back from time to time to get a better look.

During the openings I selected two favorite pieces and I’m sure that on future visits additional items will be joining this list. One of the pieces is a small, framed,  poodle made by Picasso out of what looks like either cotton balls or actual bolls of raw cotton. The small figure was to be a “companion” for GertrudeandAlice’s poodle, Basket. The other is a small passport photo of Alice from 1907, the year she traveled to Paris and met Gertrude.  I had never seen the photo before.  In it Alice is wearing a jaunty black hat proofing once again that Alice really was a “hat person!”

And that brings me to GertrudeandAlice and fashion,  One of the themes of the exhibition centers on their sense of sartorial style. Alice was more interested in the fashions of the day than Gertrude, but Gertrude knew how she wanted to present herself when it came to her dress and she did.  Once Alice entered her world, she assumed the role of Gertrude’s stylist and many of the photographs in the exhibition show Alice’s touches as a member of the “Fashion Police!”

Dressed for literary success, photo by Cecil Beaton (London, 1936)

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“When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars…”

Now you’re saying “He really has had too much of Alice’s special treat !” But no, really,  Summer 2011 in San Francisco is the Summer of Steins – I’ll bet my fringed suede vest and bell-bottomed jeans with the floral-fabric inserts at the bottom that it’s a fact!

The exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories will be at The Contemporary Jewish Museum from  May 12 – September 6, while The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde will be at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from May 21 – September 6.

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