Summer of Stein in San Francisco

Written by Lucie Jay

San Francisco is having a Steinfest this summer. To get in the mood, you might first see Gertrude and company in action in the delightful time trip of a film, “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen. Then go on to the equally atmospheric show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde”. Here you can immerse yourself in the Stein families’ Paris salons. Accompanying the paintings are photographs of their apartments showing how these same paintings were piled up on their walls.

In addition, there are wonderful period pictures of the Steins entertaining the artists and writers of the day. Furniture from the home of Gertrude Stein and her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas, has also made its way into this show: good, solid Italian pieces that did not draw attention from the colorful, wild (and at the time, often shocking) works of art on the walls. This is an exhibition of many rooms, with plenty of tales to tell, so allow plenty of time to enjoy the full experience.

SFMOMA is resurrecting Gertrude’s equally avant-garde opera, “Four Saints in Three Acts”, playing just across the street at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, August 18th to 21st.

Continue on to the nearby Contemporary Jewish Museum for another riveting exhibition, “Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories”. This exhibition focuses more on Gertrude’s life in the 1920’s and 30’s, after her break with brother Leonard, and later than the pre-World War I focus of the SFMOMA show. There is a trove of photographic and archival treasures, including recordings of Gertrude reading her own books and photographs of her, Alice, and friends captured by Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, and other leading photographers of the day.

The SFMOMA show will go on to New York and Paris and the “Five Stories” show on to Washington, DC, but seeing them together, with some of the nearby live performances would be an incredibly rich experience.

It is fitting that this would all be happening in San Francisco as the Steins were a Bay Area family. Although Gertrude lived out World War II in the south of France, brother Michael with his wife Sarah returned to the US in 1935 and settled in Palo Alto with their collection. Here, they undoubtedly shocked, entertained and educated their neighbors about modern art.

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“Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories” will be on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum during the same time period as the exhibition “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from May 21 through September 6, 2011. “The Steins Collect” reunites the unparalleled modern art collections of Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael Stein, and Michael’s wife, Sarah Stein. Jointly organized by SFMOMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, this major touring exhibition gathers approximately 200 iconic paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and illustrated books by not only Matisse and Picasso, which form the core of this presentation, but also by Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-August Renoir, among many others. “The Steins Collect” will travel to Paris and then New York after its premiere at SFMOMA.

“Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories” will be presented at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. after its premiere at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and will be on view there from October 14, 2011 through January 22, 2012.