Questions and Answers

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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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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Various materials and precious metals or gems have over the years been assigned to anniversaries  – paper for the 1st up to diamonds for both the 60th and 75th.  I have no idea who established this custom, but whoever it was must have realized that once one has been married either 60 or 75 years, even though a diamond may be forever, they don’t have too many forevers to enjoy and the heirs will soon be grabbing those family jewels.

I have not seen a comparable tradition for birthdays other than assigning precious or semi-precious gems as birthstones to correspond with the month of one’s birth. In the case of April the diamond is generally listed as that month’s birthstone though opal and sapphire have also appeared on some lists.

So today on Alice’s 134^th birthday, let’s add a diamond to the birthday feather for her birthday hat and celebrate with a spot of tea.

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As the crow flies or maybe the American Eagle, it is 953 miles or  1,582 kilometers from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to Portland, Oregon, USA and GertrudeandAlice are about to embark on this journey just in time for Alice’s 134th birthday on April 30th, as the stage is set for another Stein production.

This production, Now Repeat in Steinese , originated in New York and was written about on this blog in May of last year,  Stein ‘n Wine, a Night of Steinese. What better tribute to the Mistress of Repetition than to repeat  Now Repeat in Steinese! And what better birthday gift could Alice ask for, other than maybe a well-ostrich-feathered chapeau!

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GertrudeandAlice were never in Canada…until the last few weeks  and their arrival in Edmonton, Alberta will effect the city for a long, long time!

Just as the scrolling text in New York’s Time Square heralded their arrival in 1934, the Timms Centre for the Arts on the campus of the University of Alberta in its own way welcomed the Two Ladies from Paris with open arms with this extraordinary production, “The Gertrude Stein Project.”

There was a there there amid winter's last snow!

I was so fortunate to be there to join the welcoming party for a preview and for opening night! (I only regret that I didn’t have an armload of yellow roses, Gertrude’s favorite flower, and an armload of lilacs, Alice’s favorite flower, to toss at the feet of the team that made all of this happen!)

I generally don’t like reviews because in a review a critic often feels obligated to write about the good, the bad and the ugly. In this case there is no “bad” or  “ugly” and as you’ll see in a bit, I will provide full disclosure because all the “good,” is so, so good, you may wonder “What did they pay this guy?!”

Instead of a “review,” I call this a ” tribute”  to everyone who made “The Gertrude Stein Project” the phenomenal event that it was.

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Last year on this date, the anniversary of Alice’s death, I posted a blog emphasizing the importance of Alice’s middle initial.  If  you’d like to revisit it, just go to March 2010 in the Archives.

This year, thought, I would like to keep it brief and simple with a tribute collage I once made. On this date it honors the woman who helped Gertrude Stein be Gertrude Stein.  The photo is followed by one of the hundreds of love notes Gertrude sent to Alice.

Baby looked so pretty with a big hat on

lovely black hair,

Baby looked so pretty with no hat on

lovely black hair,

Baby looks so pretty with its little head

and its lovely black hair sleeping sweetly

on its hard pillow,

Baby looks so lovely, precious baby, baby

looks so lovely precious precious baby

It’s Thanksgiving time and time to talk “food,” as if many of us need a holiday as an excuse to talk food!

In the annual food issue of The New Yorker magazine this past week, there is an article by Laura Shapiro, “The First Kitchen,”  about the cuisine in the White House during the tenure of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Apparently the food was quite horrible, but not because of the Depression or World War II, but because of the cook that Mrs, Roosevelt had hired, a Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt.

I couldn’t help but wonder if during their visit to the White House for tea in December, 1934, GertrudeandAlice encountered any of Mrs. Nesbitt’s culinary curiosities.  And if they did, were they the perfect guests NOT whispering in Eleanor’s ear that “This Mrs. N. has got to go, for the health of the country!”

FDR carving the Bird!

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, let’s turn to tastier things.

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Last week was the beginning of fall (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) or by its more sophisticated sounding name “autumn.”  Fall used to mean that a new school year was beginning, new television programs were about to start or old, successful ones entered a new season, and the end-of-the year holidays would be here again. (My Jewish friends have already begun the rounds of holidays as Rosh Hashanah,Yom Kippur  have just passed and Sukkot is now finishing up.)

But now as I am no longer a student or teacher (in the formal sense), the school calendar means little. Television seasons now begin whenever a rating boast is needed or shows need to replace programs whose ratings are just too low to get sufficient sponsorship from ED or acid reflux pill manufacturers.  As for the Holidays—Thanksgiving is fine as it’s all about eating and sharing food, while the gift-giving ones are a pain, and don’t even ask me about my feelings about New Year’s Eve–ugh!

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Today, one hundred years ago, the moving van arrived at 27, rue de Fleurus and Alice B. Toklas’s belongings were unloaded and she moved in with Gertrude Stein!  They had first met almost three years before to the day.  Since that meeting, coming to ’27’ on a daily basis became a part of Alice’s routine and though she had undoubtedly begun to assume some household responsibilities during that period, she had most notably become the primary typist of Gertrude’s manuscripts.

A picture postcard of Paris, 1910.

Alice had been living in an apartment on rue Notre Dames des Champs within walking distance of rue de Fleurus with her San Francisco neighbor Harriet Levy.  When Harriet decided to return to San Francisco, she asked Alice to handle shipping her furniture and paintings including a Matisse.

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