Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso, two giants of 13th century art, maintained a fruitful and inspiring friendship, which marked the history of Cubism and the avant-gardes. An exhibition from September 2023, 28 to January 2024, XNUMX in the Musée du Luxembourg traces their artistic dialogue, from Paris to New York, and explores their legacy in contemporary creation.

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Joined Hands (study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon), 1907, Oil on canvas © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau © Succession Picasso 2023

The friendship between the artist Pablo Picasso and the writer G crystallized around their respective work, founder of Cubism, from what constitutes their literary and pictorial practice: analytical decomposition of everyday objects, language and painting, seriality, circularity and repetition – so many formulations and of founding discoveries of the pictorial and literary avant-gardes of the XNUMXth century.

Gertrude Stein is an American immigrant, Jewish, homosexual, who settled in Paris, rue de Fleurus, shortly after the arrival in 1901 of Pablo Picasso, a young Spanish artist. Their position as foreigners, with approximately mastery of French, their marginality are the basis of their belonging to Parisian bohemia and their artistic freedom.

Their posterity is immense. Examining their complicity, their inventiveness and following Gertrude Stein's journey between Paris and the United States, allows us to outline a journey through conceptual, performative and critical approaches to art, poetry, music and theater in through great figures of American art: John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Nam June Paik, Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs, Trisha Brown, Ray Johnson, Bruce Nauman, Carl Andre, James Lee Byars, Joseph Kosuth, Hanne Darboven, Andy Warhol, Glenn Ligon, Ellen Gallagher, Gary Hill, Deborah Kass, Felix Gonzalez Torres...

gary hill

Thus the exhibition intends to shed new and documented light on the little-known poetic work of Gertrude Stein, in relation to the paintings and sculptures of Picasso, the “ Paris Moment » (rue de Fleurus and rue Christine, a stone’s throw from the Luxembourg museum which she frequents assiduously). The American posterity of this dialogue forms the second part of the journey, the “ American Moment », with emblematic works from Steinian writing, from the 1950s to the present day: since the Living Theater and neo-dada and fluxus musical, plastic and theatrical experiments, through minimal art around language and the circle, to neo-conceptual and critical works.

Andy Warhol

A series of portraits and tribute works, such as the famous polyptych Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century by Andy Warhol or photographs of Cecil Beaton, evokes the icon Gertrude Stein. This exhibition is scheduled as part of the Picasso 1973-2023 Celebration, coordinated by the Picasso-Paris National Museum, who on this occasion shares his collection through the exceptional loan of 26 works from his collection essentially centered around the heroic years of the Demoiselles d'Avignon and cubism, as well as a remarkable set of archives. The Picasso Celebration and the exhibition are placed under the high patronage of the Presidency of the Republic.

Deborah Kass

A program of performances designed by the director Ludovic Lagarde accompanies the exhibition to highlight the cubist writing of Gertrude Stein. These 30 to 40 minute performances will take place during Monday nights at 19 p.m. and 20:30 p.m., during the entire duration of the exhibition's opening to the public (excluding school holidays and October 2) in the Tivoli room adjacent to the spaces exhibition ticket (on simple presentation of the exhibition ticket).

 

 

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