Charles Tarlton, "The Turn of Art"

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