Paris Review Looks at Gertrude Stein's 'Word Paintings'

At the Paris Review, Anne Diebel explores Gertrude Stein's "word paintings," those brief fragments of prose personifying Stein's friends and colleagues, who were some of the leading creative thinkers of her day. Diebel writes, "In some cases, she was returning the favor of a friend having made a portrait of her in another medium." From there: 

Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein was followed by Stein’s “Pablo Picasso,” which appeared in a special issue of Camera Work, edited by Alfred Stieglitz. (The issue also featured Stein’s Henri Matisse and reproductions of works by Picasso and Matisse.) Stein would then write a prose portrait of Stieglitz, too.

There’s something precious and annoying about these artists’ mutual admiration, but also something admirably transactional—you do me, I’ll do you, and we’ll both benefit. This mutual portrait project reached a new level of absurdity in 1923, when Stein’s “A Portrait of Jo Davidson” was published in Vanity Fair. Stein’s piece was accompanied by three photos: a photo by Man Ray of Davidson working on his recently completed sculpture of Stein (a bronze casting based on Davidson’s model now sits in Bryant Park); a photo of Jacques Lipchitz’s 1920 bronze bust of Stein; and a photo of Picasso’s 1907 painting.

The caption to Ray’s photo of Davidson reported that Stein had “returned [Davidson’s] compliment” by writing a portrait of him. Here is that portrait: “You know and I know, I know and you know, you know and I know, we know and they know, they know and we know, they know and I know, they know and they know you know and you know I know and I know.”

More at the Paris Review.