Category: Pablo Picasso

A Quiz: The Mona Lisa Edition

3/28/2020

Of the following four statements about Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which is untrue:

In October 1968, Aristotle Onassis attempted to purchase the painting as a wedding present for his fiancée, Jacqueline Kennedy.
The French once loaned this priceless treasure to the United States for display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Pablo Picasso was arrested in connection with stealing it in 1911.
Hedda Hopper portrayed the woman on whom the portrait was based in a 1926 Hollywood film.

The answer is after the JUMP.

“I know some men get more pleasure out of one Sunday’s church-going than I have ever done in a year’s enjoyment of wine, women, and gambling. I know not how they do it. I should like to be as they are, but I cannot change my nature, and I shall go to my death as I was born.”

Anonymous, Suburban Souls: The Erotic Psychology of a Man and a Maid

"Blue Nude" by Henri Matisse

Everything born in the great cities eventually makes its way to the outer suburbs. Such was the case with the erotic novel Suburban Souls, which was decidedly un-suburban when it was published in 1901. Henri Matisse's Blue Nude also made its debut in the first decade of the 20th Century, in 1907. Both were controversial, and Suburban Souls so much so that it had to be published anonymously. Both would seem astonishingly conventional by the end of the 20th Century.

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Et Tu, Gertrude? STein and Toklas: The World War II Years

8/1/2018

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“We spend our Friday afternoons with friends reading Shakespeare, we have read Julius Caesar, and Macbeth and now Richard the Third and what is so terrifying is that it is all just like what is happening now.”

Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at Bilignin; Photograph by Cecil Beaton

Though American citizens, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas elected to remain in France during World War II. In 1945, Stein wrote about their experiences in the slender volume Wars I Have Seen. It is a diary of sorts but only vaguely chronological. There are no identifying dates. In one passage, it becomes apparent that the tide in the war had turned, because Stein writes that Toklas was now free to decipher Stein's near-illegible handwriting and begin typing the book (Stein's logic was that since the German invaders' fortunes had fallen, she no longer feared a legible version of the manuscript might fall into the wrong hands).

There is some controversy about how Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, lesbian women of Jewish descent, not only avoided deportment to a concentration camp but managed to keep their extraordinary art collection intact. In a Julius Caesar dichotomy, was Gertrude Stein Brutus or Marc Antony? But, there is another possibility that does not quite fall into the Julius Caesar paradigm. Maybe she was Switzerland?

When war broke out in 1939, Stein and Toklas were at their country home, Bilignin, near the Swiss border in what would become Vichy France (after the French surrender). In the book, Gertrude Stein implies that it was their obscurity in the French countryside and the goodness of their neighbors that protected them. Of course, it did not hurt that Toklas and Stein were American citizens and that the United States had diplomatic relations with Vichy France until the spring of 1942.

Another compelling reason that Stein and Toklas and their art collection, with its masterpieces of works by Picasso and Cézanne, were spared was that they were protected by Bernard Fay, a friend of Stein's who was in the upper echelons of the Vichy France government. Yet, save for Stein translating into English speeches by Philippe Pétain, the leader of Vichy France, there is no evidence of quid pro quo with either Fay or Pétain. And, even the translating work is a stretch. It was Stein's view that the Germans made a terrible miscalculation in not occupying the entire country and permitting the establishment of the so-called "free France." When she made the translations, the dust had not yet settled on what the Germans would expect of the Vichy government. Stein had already ceased working on the translations when it became clear how little difference in Nazi policy there would be between occupied and unoccupied regions of the nation.

Gertrude Stein's famous art collection must be considered separately. It remained in their rue Christine apartment for the duration of the war in faraway Paris, a city actually occupied by the Nazis. Even outside of Vichy France, Bernard Fay was apparently able to protect it. The only close call occurred just before the liberation of Paris, when Gestapo officers broke in and began packing up the art in order to abscond with it. Neighbors called the police, who convinced the Germans to leave empty handed.

In a sense, anyone in a country occupied by a brutal regime must become somewhat of a collaborator, or at least appear to be, in order to survive. It is the degree that gets one into trouble. In her 2011 book, Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Dilemma, Barbara Will makes the case that Gertrude Stein went too far. In a rebuttal of that book, Edward Burns asserts that Barbra Will failed to consider the degree to which Stein and Toklas were protected by their celebrity status and by their kindly neighbors.

A Detail of "Fillette à la corbeille fleurie" by Pablo Picasso

Note: One of the works that remained untouched in Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas's rue Christine apartment was Pablo Picasso's Fillette à la corbeille fleurie. In 1968, the heirs of Gertrude Stein sold it to David Rockefeller, where it hung happily in his Manhattan townhome for nearly half a century. It was the highlight of the David and Peggy Rockefeller sale at Christie's this past May, where it sold for just over $115 million dollars.

Image Credit: Wars I Have Seen

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Pauline Trigère, on The Picasso Doctrine

10/6/2016

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“Before Picasso began to make all those crazy noses, he knew how to draw a straight line. You can’t begin to break rules unless you know them.”

Pauline Trigère, American Fashion, The Life and Lines of Adrian, Mainbocher, McCardell, Norell, and Trigère

Pauline Trigère

Image Credit: The Fashion Makers

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The Art of Subtraction

10/6/2016

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“Picasso was impressed by Matisse’s solidity of character and single-mindedness, while Matisse could not help being mesmerized by Picasso’s imagination and radicalism. With Matisse, each day added something to the quality of his knowledge: with Picasso it was the opposite—each day he would rid himself of some skill he no longer found necessary.”

Françoise Gilot, Matisse and Picasso, A Friendship in Art

Françoise Gilot; Photograph by Gloria Braggiotti Etting

Image Credit: By the Way, Photographs by Gloria Braggiotti Etting

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The Artist in His Dungeon

12/17/2015

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"All art is solitary and the studio a torture area."

Alexander Liberman, The Artist in His Studio

Pablo Picasso; Photograph by Alexander Liberman

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The Cushing/Whitney/Astor/Paley Family

11/30/2015

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The Cushing Family at the Wedding of Babe Cushing Mortimer to William S. Paley

Gogsie Cushing’s great ambition was to see her three beautiful daughters successfully married into wealthy families. On July 23, 1947, it appeared as she succeeded beyond her wildest expectations. On that day her youngest daughter Babe wed CBS mogul William S. Paley, thereby joining her sisters in the multimillionaire club. Sister Betsey was in a love match with John Hay Whitney, as rich as he was gentlemanly. Eldest sister Minnie was married to the even wealthier, if more troubled, Vincent Astor.

Gogsie died in 1949, not knowing that her dream would soon unravel. Her death gave Minnie license to plan a future more suitable to her personality. It took several years, but Minnie convinced Vincent to agree to a divorce by setting him up with his next wife, Brooke Marshall. Minnie remarried not for money but for compatibility—to the artist Jim Fosburgh.

Babe’s marriage survived but had its difficulties. Bill was an amateur photographer, and from his many portraits of her, it is obvious he loved and admired her even when his behavior failed to show it. Babe and Bill’s daughter, Kate, privately published a collection of those photographs in The Original Bill Paley, a book that rarely hits the resale market, a copy of which is presently available on the Nick Harvill Libraries website. [Postscript: it has since sold.]

Photo Credit, Jerome Zerbe, Happy Times

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A Quiz: The Mona Lisa Edition

Suburban Soulmates?

Et Tu, Gertrude? STein and Toklas: The World War II Years

Pauline Trigère, on The Picasso Doctrine

The Art of Subtraction

The Artist in His Dungeon

The Cushing/Whitney/Astor/Paley Family

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