22 pages • 44 minutes read
If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso
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Background
Visual Arts Context
Gertrude Stein was a key figure in Modernism, one of the most volatile and experimental periods of Western visual arts. There are very few common links between the visual artists associated with the Modernism, and this is partially due to the movement’s emphasis on experimentation between the 1890s and the 1930s. The period marked a deliberate break from artistic tradition, and many artists attempted new styles simply because they differed from what came before. Pablo Picasso, for instance, went through six distinct styles between 1901 and 1929. These include the Rose Period (1904-1906), during which Picasso painted his portrait of Stein, and Picasso’s Analytic Cubism (1909-1912).
Analytic Cubism has a massive influence on Stein’s work. It continued to influence her even after Picasso moved on to Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919) and Neoclassical works (1919-1929). Analytic Cubism is a style developed by Picasso and Georges Braque that attempts to take apart objects and analyze their shapes and individual components. Stein took up this Cubist approach in her literary portraits. Stein aimed, in part, to make literature a spacial art. Though Stein cannot use colors or shapes to depict her subject in “If I Told Him,”she uses words to a similar end. Instead of presenting a linear, representative depiction of Picasso, Stein uses words to create sensory impressions that cohere together in a complete portrait. Just as the Analytic Cubists turned away from linear perspective, Stein turned away from linear grammar, logic, and narration.
Literary Context
Like the visual arts, Western literature underwent a number of shifts in the early 20th century. The Modernist movement in poetry, and literature more generally, was also marked by a deliberate break from tradition. Modernist poet—and co-founder of the Imagist movement within Modernism—Ezra Pound famously impelled artists to make new and original works. For the Imagists, this meant attempting to create the physical experience of their subjects through words and sharp imagery. Often, these words and imagery bore little relationship to the objects themselves (See: Further Reading & Resources).
Like with Modernist visual arts, Modernist poets use an astounding amount of forms and styles. The underlying commonality between them is their desire to create new works that are capable of making sense of an increasingly fragmented world and social order. The Modernist response is to lean into and to reflect this fragmentation in the poetic form. They focus on the juxtaposition of impressions and sensory detail to create vivid imagery. Rather than create narratives, Modernists tend to present their images without context. Many Modernist poets, like Stein and Pound, abandon traditional forms, subjects, and meter to better suit these ends.
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By Gertrude Stein
