The Seizin Press was a small press , founded in 1927 by Laura Riding and Robert Graves in London from 1928 until 1935. From 1930 it was based in Majorca .
57-704: Besides work by Graves and Riding, the Seizin Press published works by Gertrude Stein , Len Lye , Honor Wyatt and James Reeves . During the 1980s, a "New Seizin Press" was operated by an acquaintance of Graves. Seizin Press Vero is owned and operated by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation located in Vero Beach, Fl. The first volume "Decades" represents poetry by leading American poets who have participated in
114-474: A close relationship. Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, but she often read Shakespeare , Wordsworth , Scott , Burns , Smollett , Fielding , and more. When Stein was 14 years old, her mother died. Three years later, her father died as well. Stein's eldest brother, Michael Stein, age 26, then took over the family business holdings, moved his four siblings to San Francisco, where he now
171-559: A committed mentor to Stein at Radcliffe, recognizing her intellectual potential, and declaring her his "most brilliant woman student", encouraged Stein to enroll in medical school. Although Stein professed no interest in either the theory or practice of medicine, she enrolled at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1897. In her fourth year, Stein failed an important course, lost interest, and left. Ultimately, medical school had bored her, and she had spent many of her evenings not applying herself to her studies, but taking long walks and attending
228-399: A continuous presence in her work, which Grahn argues is a consequence of the previous principles, especially commonality and centeredness. Grahn describes "play" as the granting of autonomy and agency to the readers or audience: "rather than the emotional manipulation that is a characteristic of linear writing, Stein uses play ." In addition, Stein's work is funny, and multilayered, allowing
285-442: A domestic division of labor that Stein would replicate in her relationship with Alice B. Toklas . Stein attended Radcliffe College , then an annex of Harvard University , from 1893 to 1897 and was a student of psychologist William James . With James's supervision, Stein and another student, Leon Mendez Solomons, performed experiments on normal motor automatism , a phenomenon hypothesized to occur in people when their attention
342-470: A fictional story about a love triangle ; Three Lives (1905–06); The Making of Americans (1902–1911); and Tender Buttons (1914). Her activities during World War II have been the subject of analysis and commentary. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France , Stein may have been able to sustain her lifestyle as an art collector, and indeed to ensure her physical safety, only through
399-460: A lecture to a group of Baltimore women in 1899, Stein gave a controversial speech titled "The Value of College Education for Women", undoubtedly designed to provoke the largely middle-class audience. In the lecture Stein maintained: average middle class woman [supported by] some male relative, a husband or father or brother,...[is] not worth her keep economically considered. [This economic dependence caused her to become] oversexed...adapting herself to
456-405: A letter Stein wrote during the 1930s, she explained that she never accepted the theory of automatic writing : "[T]here can be automatic movements, but not automatic writing. Writing for the normal person is too complicated an activity to be indulged in automatically." She did publish an article in a psychological journal on "spontaneous automatic writing" while at Radcliffe, but "the unconscious and
513-466: A literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention. Two quotes from her works have become widely known: " Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose ", and "there is no there there", with the latter often taken to be a reference to her childhood home of Oakland. Her books include Q.E.D. (1903), about a lesbian romantic affair involving several of Stein's friends; Fernhurst ,
570-503: A long way off." By early 1906, Leo and Gertrude Stein's studio had many paintings by Henri Manguin , Pierre Bonnard , Pablo Picasso , Paul Cézanne , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Honoré Daumier , Henri Matisse , and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . Their collection was representative of two famous art exhibitions that took place during their residence together in Paris, and to which they contributed, either by lending their art or by patronizing
627-530: A medical student, Mabel Haynes. Witnessing the relationship between the two women served for Stein as her "erotic awakening". The unhappy love triangle demoralized Stein, arguably contributing to her decision to abandon her medical studies. In 1902, Stein's brother Leo Stein left for London, and Stein followed. The following year the two relocated to Paris, where Leo hoped to pursue an art career. From 1903 until 1914, when they dissolved their common household, Gertrude and her brother Leo shared living quarters near
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#1732779820374684-489: A mentor, but they later grew apart, especially after Stein called Hemingway "yellow" in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Upon the birth of his son, Hemingway asked Stein to be the godmother of his child. While Stein has been credited with inventing the term " Lost Generation " for those whose defining moment in time and coming of age had been World War I and its aftermath, there are at least three versions of
741-414: A portrait of her), Stein wrote: I explained that for me, all modern painting is based on what Cézanne nearly made, instead of basing itself on what he almost managed to make. When he could not make a thing, he hijacked it and left it. He insisted on showing his incapacity: he spread his lack of success: showing what he could not do, became an obsession for him. People influenced by him were also obsessed with
798-526: A unique importance to me that nothing can replace. The Picasso landscape is not important in any such sense. We are, as it seems to me on the whole, both so well off now that we needn't repine. The Cézannes had to be divided. I am willing to leave you the Picasso oeuvre, as you left me the Renoir, and you can have everything except that. I want to keep the few drawings that I have. This leaves no string for me, it
855-436: A variety of interpretations and engagements. Lastly, Grahn argues that one must " inster stand... engage with the work, to mix with it in an active engagement, rather than 'figuring it out.' Figure it in." In 1932, using an accessible style to appeal to a wider audience, she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was actually Stein's autobiography. The style
912-606: A year-long sojourn abroad, they returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California , where her father became director of San Francisco's streetcar lines, the Market Street Railway . Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland 's Sabbath school. During their residence in Oakland, they lived for four years on a ten-acre lot, and Stein built many memories of California there. She would often go on excursions with her brother, Leo, with whom she developed
969-413: Is a good example. Her works include novels, plays, stories, libretti , and poems written in a highly idiosyncratic, playful, repetitive, and humorous style. Typical quotes are: " Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose "; "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle"; about her childhood home in Oakland , "There
1026-413: Is a rose is a rose is a rose as a canon dedicated to Philip Corner , beginning with "a" on an upbeat and continuing so that each repetition shuffles the words, e.g. "a/rose is a rose/is a rose is/a rose is a/rose." While living in Paris, Stein began submitting her writing for publication. Her earliest writings were mainly retellings of her college experiences. Her first critically acclaimed publication
1083-421: Is absent in her writing, so the reader is given the power to decide how to think and feel about the writing. Anxiety, fear, and anger are also absent, and her work is harmonic and integrative. Stein's work was included in the second issue of 0 to 9 magazine , a journal which explored language and meaning-making during the 1960s avant garde movement. Stein predominantly used the present progressive tense, creating
1140-461: Is divided between two simultaneous intelligent activities such as writing and speaking. These experiments yielded examples of writing that appeared to represent " stream of consciousness ", a psychological theory often attributed to James and the style of modernist authors Virginia Woolf and James Joyce . In 1934, behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner interpreted Stein's difficult poem Tender Buttons as an example of normal motor automatism . In
1197-534: Is financially equable either way for estimates are only rough & ready methods, & I'm afraid you'll have to look upon the loss of the apples as an act of God. I have been anxious above all things that each should have in reason all that he wanted, and just as I was glad that Renoir was sufficiently indifferent to you so that you were ready to give them up, so I am glad that Pablo is sufficiently indifferent to me that I am willing to let you have all you want of it. Leo departed with sixteen Renoirs and, relinquishing
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#17327798203741254-884: Is no there there"; and "The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable." A reader wrote to Stein in 1933 asking her to explain the rose quotation received a reply from Toklas as her secretary: "The device rose is a rose is a rose is a rose means just that. Miss Stein is unfortunately too busy herself to be able to tell you herself, but trusts that you will eventually come to understand that each and every word that she writes means exactly what she says, for she says very exactly what she means, and really nothing more, but, of course, nothing less." These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical essays or "portraits", were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as literature's answer to visual art styles and forms such as Cubism , plasticity, and collage . Many of
1311-450: Is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music. Just as one may stop, for once, in a way, before a canvas of Picasso, and, letting one's reason sleep for an instant, may exclaim: "It is a fine pattern!" so, listening to Gertrude Stein's words and forgetting to try to understand what they mean, one submits to their gradual charm. Stein and Carl Van Vechten ,
1368-527: Is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality." Her use of repetition is ascribed to her search for descriptions of the "bottom nature" of her characters, such as in The Making of Americans where the narrator is described through the repetition of narrative phrases such as "As I was saying" and "There will be now a history of her." Stein used many Anglo-Saxon words and avoided words with "too much association". Social judgment
1425-562: The New York Sun ) did much for Stein's reputation in the United States, publicizing her art acquisitions and her importance as a cultural figure. Of the art collection at 27 Rue de Fleurus, McBride commented: "[I]n proportion to its size and quality... [it is] just about the most potent of any that I have ever heard of in history." McBride also observed that Gertrude "collected geniuses rather than masterpieces. She recognized them
1482-559: The Luxembourg Gardens on the Left Bank of Paris in a two-story apartment (with the adjacent studio) located on the interior courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus , 6th arrondissement . Here they accumulated the works of art that formed a collection that became renowned for its prescience and historical importance. The gallery space was furnished with imposing Renaissance -era furniture from Florence , Italy. The paintings lined
1539-759: The Foundation's annual "Poetry & Barbecue." https://www.LRJF.org . This Spanish corporation or company article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a publishing company is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh ), and raised in Oakland, California , Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for
1596-464: The Picassos and most of Matisse to his sister, took only a portrait sketch Picasso had done of him. He remained dedicated to Cézanne, nonetheless, leaving all the artist's works with his sister, taking with him only a Cézanne painting of "5 apples". The split between brother and sister was acrimonious. Stein did not see Leo Stein again until after World War I , and then through only a brief greeting on
1653-537: The Saturday evenings were: Fernande Olivier (an artists’ model in a relationship with Picasso), Georges Braque (artist), André Derain (artist), Max Jacob (poet), Guillaume Apollinaire (poet and art critic), Marie Laurencin (artist, in a relationship with Apollinaire), Henri Rousseau (painter), and Joseph Stella (painter). Hemingway frequented Stein's salon, but the two had an uneven relationship. They began as close friends, with Hemingway admiring Stein as
1710-414: The abnormal sex desire of the male...and becoming a creature that should have been first a human being and then a woman into one that is a woman first and always. While a student at Johns Hopkins and purportedly still naïve about sexual matters, Stein experienced an awakening of her latent sexuality. Sometime in 1899 or 1900, she became infatuated with Mary Bookstaver who was involved in a relationship with
1767-506: The artwork of Picasso and Juan Gris , most of her other pictures having been sold. Gertrude Stein's personality has dominated the provenance of the Stein art legacy. It was, however, her brother Leo who was the astute art appraiser. Alfred Barr Jr., the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art , said that between the years of 1905 and 1907, "[Leo] was possibly the most discerning connoisseur and collector of 20th-century painting in
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1824-399: The conventional female role. Her uncorseted physical appearance and eccentric mode of dress aroused comment and she was described as "Big and floppy and sandaled and not caring a damn." According to Linda Wagner-Martin, Stein's "controversial stance on women's medicine caused problems with the male faculty" and contributed to her decision to leave without finishing her degree. Asked to give
1881-571: The dealer Ambroise Vollard . Vollard was heavily involved in the Cézanne art market, and he was the first important contact in the Paris art world for both Leo and Gertrude. The joint collection of Gertrude and Leo Stein began in late 1904 when Michael Stein announced that their trust account had accumulated a balance of 8,000 francs. They spent this at Vollard 's Gallery, buying Gauguin 's Sunflowers and Three Tahitians , Cézanne's Bathers , and two Renoirs . The art collection increased and
1938-458: The experimental works such as Tender Buttons have since been interpreted by critics as a feminist reworking of patriarchal language. These works were well received by avant-garde critics but did not initially achieve mainstream success. Despite Stein's work on " automatic writing " with William James , she did not see her work as automatic, but as an 'excess of consciousness'. Though Stein collected cubist paintings, especially those of Picasso,
1995-486: The featured artists. The Steins' elder brother, Michael, and sister-in-law Sarah (Sally) acquired a large number of Henri Matisse paintings; Gertrude's friends from Baltimore, Claribel and Etta Cone , collected similarly, eventually donating their art collection, virtually intact, to the Baltimore Museum of Art . While numerous artists visited the Stein salon, many of these artists were not represented among
2052-509: The fixed day and time for formal congregation so Stein could work at her writing uninterrupted by impromptu visitors. It was Stein's partner Alice who became the de facto hostess for the wives and girlfriends of the artists in attendance, who met in a separate room. From "Alice Entertained the Wives" (New York Times, 1977): " 'I am a person acted upon, not a person who acts,' Alice told one of Gertrude's biographers (...) When guests showed up, Alice
2109-512: The hamlet of Bilignin in the commune of Belley ( Ain ), which was initially outside the area of direct German occupation in the Zone libre . Stein's writing can be placed in three categories: "hermetic" works best illustrated by The Making of Americans : The Hersland Family ; popularized writing such as The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ; and speech writing and more accessible autobiographical writing of later years, of which Brewsie and Willie
2166-600: The intuition (even when James himself wrote about them) never concerned her". At Radcliffe, she began a lifelong friendship with Mabel Foote Weeks, whose correspondence traces much of the progression of Stein's life. In 1897, Stein spent the summer in Woods Hole, Massachusetts , studying embryology at the Marine Biological Laboratory . She received her A.B. (Bachelor of Arts) magna cum laude from Radcliffe in 1898. William James, who had become
2223-475: The largest visual arts influence on her literary work is that of Cézanne . Particularly, he influenced her idea of equality, distinguished from universality: "the whole field of the canvas is important". Rather than a figure/ground relationship, "Stein in her work with words used the entire text as a field in which every element mattered as much as any other." It is a subjective relationship that includes multiple viewpoints. Stein explained: "[T]he important thing...
2280-431: The noted critic and photographer, became acquainted in Paris in 1913. The two became lifelong friends, devising pet names for each other: Van Vechten was "Papa Woojums", and Stein, "Baby Woojums". Van Vechten served as an enthusiastic champion of Stein's literary work in the United States, in effect becoming her American agent. Market Street Railway (1893%E2%80%931944) Too Many Requests If you report this error to
2337-513: The opera. Stein's tenure at Johns Hopkins was marked by challenges and stress. Men dominated the medical field, and the inclusion of women in the profession was not unreservedly or unanimously welcomed. Writing of this period in her life (in Things As They Are , 1903) Stein often revealed herself as a depressed young woman dealing with a paternalistic culture, struggling to find her own identity, which she realized could not conform to
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2394-465: The paintings on the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Where Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso's works dominated Leo and Gertrude's collection, the collection of Michael and Sarah Stein emphasized Matisse. In April 1914 Leo relocated to Settignano, Italy, near Florence , and the art collection was divided. The division of the Steins' art collection was described in a letter by Leo: The Cézanne apples have
2451-456: The protection of the powerful Vichy government official and Nazi collaborator Bernard Faÿ . After the war ended, Stein expressed admiration for another Nazi collaborator, Vichy leader Marshal Pétain . Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (which merged with Pittsburgh in 1907), to upper-middle-class Jewish parents, Daniel Stein and Amelia Stein, née Keyser. Her father
2508-455: The remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon , where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso , Ernest Hemingway , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Sinclair Lewis , Ezra Pound , Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse , would meet. In 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas , her life partner . The book became
2565-401: The story that led to the phrase, two by Hemingway and one by Stein. During the summer of 1931, Stein advised the young composer and writer Paul Bowles to go to Tangier , where she and Alice had vacationed. In 1938, Stein and Toklas moved from the rue de Fleurus to 5 rue Christine in the 6th arrondissement . For much of the war they sheltered in a house they had rented for several years in
2622-416: The street in Paris. After this accidental encounter, they never saw or spoke to each other again. The Steins' holdings were dispersed eventually by various methods and for various reasons. After her and Leo's households separated in 1914, Stein continued to collect examples of Picasso's art, which had turned to Cubism , a style Leo did not appreciate. At her death, Gertrude's remaining collection emphasized
2679-980: The things which Cézanne wanted to do, but it was too hard a task for him: it killed him. And now here we are, I find a young painter who does not follow the tendency to play with what Cézanne could not do, but who attacks any right the things which he tried to make, to create the objects which have to exist, for, and in themselves, and not in relation. The gatherings in the Stein home "brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art". Dedicated attendees included Pablo Picasso , Ernest Hemingway , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Sinclair Lewis , Ezra Pound , Gavin Williamson , Thornton Wilder , Sherwood Anderson , Francis Cyril Rose , Bob Brown , René Crevel , Élisabeth de Gramont , Francis Picabia , Claribel Cone , Mildred Aldrich , Jane Peterson , Carl Van Vechten , Henri Matisse and Georges Braque . Saturday evenings had been set as
2736-401: The things which they could not reach and they began the system of camouflage. It was natural to do so, even inevitable: that soon became an art, in peace and war, and Matisse concealed and insisted at the same time that Cézanne could not realize, and Picasso concealed, played, and tormented all these things. The only one who wanted to insist on this problem was Juan Gris. He persisted by deepening
2793-600: The walls at Rue de Fleurus were rearranged continually to make way for new acquisitions. In "the first half of 1905" the Steins acquired Cézanne 's Portrait of Mme Cézanne and Delacroix 's Perseus and Andromeda . Shortly after the opening of the Salon d'Automne of 1905 (on October 18, 1905), the Steins acquired Matisse's Woman with a Hat and Picasso's Young Girl with a Flower Basket . In 1906, Picasso completed Portrait of Gertrude Stein , which remained in her collection until her death. Henry McBride (art critic for
2850-437: The walls in tiers trailing many feet to the ceiling. Initially illuminated by gaslight, the artwork was later lit by electric light shortly prior to World War I . Leo Stein cultivated important art world connections, enabling the Stein holdings to grow over time. The art historian and collector Bernard Berenson hosted Gertrude and Leo in his English country house in 1902, facilitating their introduction to Paul Cézanne and
2907-465: The world." After the artworks were divided between the two Stein siblings, it was Gertrude who moved on to champion the works of what proved to be lesser talents in the 1930s. She concentrated on the work of Juan Gris , André Masson , and Sir Francis Rose . In 1932, Stein asserted: "Painting now after its great period has come back to be a minor art." In 1945, in a preface for the first exhibition of Spanish painter Francisco Riba Rovira (who painted
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#17327798203742964-480: Was Three Lives . In 1911, Mildred Aldrich introduced Stein to Mabel Dodge Luhan and they began a short-lived but fruitful friendship during which the wealthy Mabel Dodge promoted Gertrude's legend in the United States. Mabel was enthusiastic about Stein's sprawling publication The Makings of Americans and, at a time when Stein had much difficulty selling her writing to publishers, privately published 300 copies of Portrait of Mabel Dodge at Villa Curonia . Dodge
3021-641: Was a director of the Market Street Cable Railway Company , and in 1892 arranged for Gertrude and another sister, Bertha, to live with their mother's family in Baltimore . Here she lived with her uncle David Bachrach , who in 1877 had married Gertrude's maternal aunt, Fanny Keyser. In Baltimore, Stein met Claribel and Etta Cone , who held Saturday evening salons that she would later emulate in Paris. The Cones shared an appreciation for art and conversation about it and modeled
3078-429: Was a wealthy businessman with real estate holdings. German and English were spoken in their home. Gertrude's siblings were: Michael (1865), Simon (1868), Bertha (1870), and Leo (1872). When Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna , and then Paris. Accompanied by governesses and tutors, the Steins endeavored to imbue their children with the cultured sensibilities of European history and life. After
3135-625: Was also involved in the publicity and planning of the 69th Regiment Armory Show in 1913, "the first avant-garde art exhibition in America". In addition, she wrote the first critical analysis of Stein's writing to appear in America, in "Speculations, or Post-Impressionists in Prose", published in a special March 1913 publication of Arts and Decoration . Foreshadowing Stein's later critical reception, Dodge wrote in "Speculations": In Gertrude Stein's writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it
3192-456: Was called upon to entertain their wives. The ladies were, of course, 'second‐class citizens' " Gertrude attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, as people began visiting to see his paintings and those of Cézanne: "Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began." Among Picasso's acquaintances who frequented
3249-491: Was quite similar to that of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook , which was written by Toklas. Many critics speculated that Toklas actually had written The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , despite Toklas repeatedly denying authorship. Several of Stein's writings have been set to music by composers, including Virgil Thomson 's operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All , and James Tenney 's setting of Rose
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