This piece was originally published in Fiction International, Issue 45, "About Seeing." It is dedicated to Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA, whose tour around "The Steins Collect" was so exhilarating.
The Turn of Art
A dramatic scene in prose and verse
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’s atelier at 27 rue de Fleurus,
Paris. It is 1907.
The room is filled with heavy furniture, a large writing
desk, sideboards, tables, and cupboards.
1. Pablo Picasso (Left Stage Center) and Henri Matisse
(right Stage Center) sit in low chairs across from each other in front of the
fireplace (Up Stage Center). They face us as if looking into a camera (think of
the famous photo of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas by Man Ray taken in
1922).
On the wall (Up Stage Left) behind
PICASSO, 5 MATISSE paintings are hanging—Woman
in a hat (1905), Madame Matisse (1905), Le Bonheur de vivre (1905-6), Blue Nude
(1907), and Self-portrait (1906).
On the wall (Up Stage Right) behind
MATISSE we see 5 PICASSO paintings—Boy
Leading a Horse (1905-6)), Gertrude Stein (1905-6), Young Acrobat on a Ball (1905),
Nude with Joined Hands (1906), and Self-portrait (1906).
PICASSO
once we had turned
our backs on the museums
Pause.
where could we go?
Indicates MATISSE, sarcastically.
then he started
drawing
lines of paint an inch wide
MATISSE
wasn’t easy
while so many others
were portraying
the fine line of a nose
details in strands of hair
PICASSO
not enough, not
for him. Just
to make it
look like real fruit
Pause.
no more trompe-l'œil for him
Pause.
dot’s enough for a nipple
MATISSE
I drew with brush
loads of flat blue house paint
made my lines thick
all around the outside
black between trees and sky
Pause.
MATISSE stands and crosses the
room. He takes Boy Leading a Horse from the wall and
carries it back to his chair. He
leans it against the wall beside his chair and sits down.
Not every one, however, followed my lead.
Pause,
admiring Picasso’s picture.
browns and some grays
this is a precocious child’s
drawing. A
horse!
a boy’s dream of the West
the open plains to ride
PICASSO
a poetic
dream might more easily
bring in the cash
hung on their wall till 1913
you often saw it there
Pause,
PICASSO points to a spot on the wall
later Nazis forced
von
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
to liquidate
hispano-judaic
art smuggled out and sold
MATISSE
marketable
like pigeons in St Marks
swarmed around you
as they changed to property
they escaped like wild birds
Pause.
I was waiting
for you to drop it all
come up to art
renounce celebrity
stop showing off—show us!
works of genius
make us feel supremely
diminutive
genius has to give it up
forfeit its advantage
PICASSO
has to give up what?
MATISSE
superiority
Pause.
they used to say
I wish I could draw like that
now they say, anyone could
Pause.
PICASSO
I felt deeply
every brush stroke of these
as I made them
but in cold aftermath
just financial success
Pause, as if reflecting.
I was watching, you know, despite my cool demeanor. But, I loved the life in the cafés, you
know, the money, spreading my name around. And the women, they all wanted to touch my genius.
Pause.
You did none of that.
You ran no races, gave no quarter.
How was that?
you were ahead
tossing off thick-limbed monsters
driving me mad
you made these obstacles
I had to climb over
MATISSE
Finally!
PICASSO
I wanted to paint
with a heavier hand
lose all my fear
of teachers, my father
forget about the saints
MATISSE
could see clearly
down into the world’s heart
below surfaces
but you kept painting them,
the surfaces, the smiles
PICASSO stands and claps. He then crosses the room behind MATISSE
and removes Woman with a hat and
carries it back to his chair and holds it on his lap, partly turning it so the
audience can see.
PICASSO
this is, of course
all odd lumps of color
unexpected
rub out the woman’s face
PICASSO covers the face with his
hand.
—and behold Kandinsky!
you sped ahead
on wings of distortion
shape and color
yours to waste, invent
new wonders for the eye
Pause.
no milliner
could make a hat like that
it was conceived
on an insane palette
laughing, you were laughing
MATISSE looks around the room, as
if trying to orient himself. Coughs.
MATISSE
Somewhere near here, art’s roadmap changed abruptly. Up ahead or looking just behind us, out
of the corner of my eye, we were poking forward, looking for the line just so
we could step over it.
I saw you coming up.
PICASSO
the other side,
how I longed to be free
overstepping
there’d be no looking back
MATISSE
make the first real
pictures!
2. The stage goes
dark. Two middle-aged men emerge from the wings (Down Stage Right) under a
single spot, dressed as
GERTRUDE STEIN (PETER CARMODY) and ALICE B. TOKLAS (ANDREW BLIGHT) and wearing
the same hats worn in the famous snapshot taken in Aix-les-Bains, 1927.
CARMODY (GERTRUDE)
they never knew
what the very next thing
might be—tiny
legs, an arm, thick as trees
palm tree fronds like fish bones
BLIGHT (ALICE)
They were always searching for it, for the new. At first in different ways; Picasso, of
course, classically trained, gifted, was a long time shaking off the lessons,
his tutored instincts. The Blue
and Rose periods—he could have been using a camera.
Pause.
Henri was different, all for crude outlines, sudden colors,
rough dabs of paint, the merest suggestion.
CARMODY
he made it strange
defied the viewer’s eye
BLIGHT
no matter what
it was, it disappeared
CARMODY
into paint, just the paint
Pause.
That’s it, of course.
He overthrew the subject.
Only the paint counted.
That was where the eye fell; there, on the paint, the thick
paint piling up, the paint on top of other paint, the paint plowed by the brush
like a field readied for planting.
Pause.
Look on the wall!
You see the picture of his wife, Madame
Matisse, with the green line down her nose? See what I mean?
Compare that to Picasso; choose one there on the wall.
What about the portrait of Gertrude Stein?
Pause.
I mean, my
portrait.
PICASSO and MATISSE rise and
retrieve their respective paintings and bring them (Down Stage Right). They stand under the spot, holding the
paintings in front of their chests.
BLIGHT
He meant it to look like you, a resemblance, but, he said, if it didn’t look like you right now,
that was all right, because it eventually would.
CARMODY
it was just exactly me.
PICASSO holds the painting out and
turns it so he can see it. He
looks at CARMODY.
PICASSO
I was looking for truth
not just surfaces
behind those eyes, a mind
was watching for a sign
CARMODY
You’re right, I had seen so much
Pauses,
musing.
on the lookout
PICASSO
your eyes reach out to probe
what you’re hearing
as if to say, I had hoped
you’d not be like the rest
MATISSE
And, what do we say about Madame Matisse’s portrait?
Can your discerning eye probe deeper meaning there?
What do you make of that green stripe?
BLIGHT
perhaps you meant
only to encompass
her, register
your discontent with life
the burden of marriage
I always felt
MATISSE
pushed into the background
disapproval
in those black eyes, stern lips
BLIGHT
how would you even know?
CARMODY
I still say it’s the paint; the spirits of all the wild
emotions caught up in spread paint, bone splinters in the ambergris—color, thickness, smell—wide brushes.
It looks like whatever you want it to look like.
Pause.
No. It was not about looking, or smelling, or being like anything at all.
It meant in fact—red, the green, the violet, and orange;
just as it means blue, black, and yellow—in any of their many permutations, in
a chance encounter, as crude parts of the world.
MATISSE
it was to paint
because I was making
PICASSO
objects from paint
Pause.
my mind’s eye gave the world
only the quickest glance
3. CARMODY AND BLIGHT exit. Spot off, Stage lights up.
MATISSE and PICASSO are back in their chairs. PICASSO points up at a painting, The Young Acrobat on a Ball.
MATISSE
there’s a story
in that one for certain
pure narrative
tempts us to wondering
who the large sad man is
Pause.
I contemplate
more the lonely woman
child, boy, and dog
dreamily facing hills
where a white horse grazes
the acrobat
is a boy or a girl
learning to stand
on such uncertainty
focussing attention
PICASSO
it was Giotto
or me, could draw perfect
freehand circles
MATISSE
painted like Velázquez
aims now to be a child
MATISSE crosses the room and stands
under his painting, Le Bonheur de Vivre.
He points up to it.
PICASSO
Childishness, to be sure, yet there’s nothing childish about it.
Your hills and distances are but suggested (did you notice?)
while the big ideas, all the rest, are wild reds and greens, hints of mythology
in all the playful poses, but circles and careless dots for eyes, spring
frolics, and a touch of sensuousness, perspective out of whack
—verges on humorous.
far more expressive
than my pouting giant
or my morose
pale hills.
Your lovers run in
search of cartoon nudity
MATISSE
So, you want to talk about nudes?
MATISSE reaches up and removes Nude with Joined Hands. He looks closely at it.
You were still painting like Velázquez.
Pause.
you’re so polite
your nude’s too well-mannered
covers herself
could be from Pompey’s walls
a goddess or priestess
she’s a mural
painted on Spanish stucco
inside a church
PICASSO
I meant to paint
women someone could love
I was out to show the world who was master. Infinite reflection and dark
resignation show on the faces of my men; the deepest sadness, calm, or joy
appears on the faces of my women, because they are so beautiful. The children
know so much.
I could not paint the kind of pulsing stones, the female
boulders you were so happy to make.
Pause.
I dreamt women
you could take out walking
they’d hold your arm
it took time seeing how
wrong; longer catching up.
4. PICASSO goes behind his chair and takes out a long
pointer rod. He goes over to the
paintings and stands in front of Blue
Nude. He points to it.
Long
Pause. He is just looking at the
painting, transfixed for a moment.
this was vulgar
so I at first decided
androgynous
whore-sailor all in one
promiscuously drawn
PICASSO comes to (Down Stage Center),
Pauses again, and leans intimately
toward the audience, in confidence.
Pornographic.
Pause, sighs in resignation.
this beautiful hulk is
REALITY
Look at it!
Look at it!
a carcass of hip bones
ankles, twisted rib cage
Pause,
to MATISSE directly, as if, for the moment, giving in.
This was your high water mark.
I knew it instantly.
I ran home and drew a hundred chunky naked women leaning on their
elbows, sharp hip bones and one leg flung over the other—a hundred, at
least.
You had launched a thunderbolt, for certain, but I thought
to myself, “I will rise to that, rise up to that!”
MATISSE
caught by surprise
lost sight of the way ahead
in a fever to catch up
Pause.
with this the history
of modern art resumes
PICASSO
that we could teach
the art world to embrace
this meaty toad
MATISSE
love and art together
move closer to the truth
PICASSO
The way ahead congealed, the compass and the raw materials
were set.
MATISSE
If anyone could have seen into the future, this would have
been…
MATISSE makes an all-inclusive
gesture with his waving arm.
…where it all started.
5. PICASSO reaches up and takes down the Self-portrait by MATISSE; MATISSE takes
down the Self-portrait by
PICASSO. They both come (Down
Stage Center) and stand holding the paintings and facing the audience. PICASSO
pulls a false beard from the portrait of MATISSE. The two portraits reveal a
strong family resemblance—the portraits of two brothers.
Curtain