"We Are Surrounded By Homosexuals:" Gertrude & Alice at NPG

The only shot because the young guard warned me there is "no photographizing anywhere in Gertrude Stein."

Tomorrow, Hide/Seek re-emerges at the Brooklyn Museum but the best queer show of the year is now on display at its former home, the National Portrait Gallery in DC, where a gallery wall is emblazoned with the quote, "We are surrounded by homosexuals, they do all the good things in all the arts." So wrote Gertrude Stein in a 1934 letter to Samuel Steward, and co-curators Wanda Corn and Tirza True Latimer have created their marvelous show about Gertrude & Alice with major emphasis on queerness. Again, this is painted on the wall at the entrance:

"This exhibition tells five stories about Stein and the sensorium of seeing, taking seriously the writer’s repeated insistence that eyes “were more important than ears.” Story one, “Picturing Gertrude,” presents portraits of Stein, who modeled freely for artists. The second story, “Domestic Stein,” looks at the lesbian partnership of Stein and Alice B. Toklas, focusing on their distinctive dress, home décor, hospitality, food, and pets. “Art of Friendship” explores Stein’s relationships and collaborations after World War I with the neoromantics, a circle of international artists who were young, male, and gay. “Celebrity Stein” tells of Stein’s triumphant return to the United States in 1934–35, and the last story, “Legacies,” explores her ongoing presence in contemporary art."

Corn and Latimer restore Alice as the essential figure she was in that sphere, and they deconstruct how both women dressed to announce and highlight their lesbianism and coupledom to the public. The curators also emphasize nine gay men in their circle: Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Carl Van Vechten, Virgil Thomson, Pavel Tchelitchew, George Platt Lynes, Francis Rose, Frederick Ashton, and Kristians Tonny. Forty years before Mapplethorpe, Lynes photographed white Frederick Ashton standing clothed amid three reclining nude black male dancers from Four Saints in Three Acts. Far from degaying the image, the text by the photos explains choreographer Ashton had sex with at least two of the company's male principals.

Seeing Gertrude Stein began at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. If you missed it there and are unlikely to be in DC before January 22, get the show's smart, fascinating companion book.

Comments

[Nick]

Thanks for posting this or I wouldn't know about it. Sandy sent me the link...