Questions and Answers

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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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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One of the benefits of a blog is that it can be timely and even though a few posts ago I had listed upcoming things that I’d planned to write about, my recent trip to Japan got in the way.  (I began the draft of this post in our hotel in Kyoto, two days before our return, though I  verified a few facts in books I have at home before I published this.)

Leo Stein in a rakish pose

Just for fun while in Kyoto, I decided to do a Google search for “Leo Stein Japanese prints,” as I knew that Leo had an interest in this type of art.  These prints had come to the attention of Westerners as they were used to wrap Japanese porcelain which became very popular following the opening of the country in the 1860’s.  This art form also influenced the subject matter and composition of the Post-impressionists’ paintings.

Japanese print circa 1895. Is it a rose?

To my surprise (why am I still surprised at what turns up on the Internet – must be the fact I haven’t graduated to texting and tweeting and am still an old-school e mail writer!) an item appeared that is in the Stein collection at Yale – a note Leo wrote to Gertrude from Kyoto in December, 1895, giving her his address written in Japanese!

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