From Stein to Armantrout to Levertov
April 14, 2012
Aspects of modernism, biography, and patronage assemble as do the artists in the Steins’ salon in the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit “The Steins Collect.” Images of paintings and photographs and excerpts from Rebecca Rabinow’s wall text sparked thoughts and reading hours after seeing the show. The patrons and the artists, the writers and the painters, their connections, shared intimacies and aesthetics, collaborations and fallings-out; how many owned and cherished one of Cezanne’s “Bathers”, Picasso’s remark of his famous portrait of Stein that she “would look like that someday”, and especially Picasso’s “Nude with Joined Hands”. The color!
The morning-after’s reflection led me to Mark Goble’s Beautiful Circuits, to Tender Buttons, to Rae Armantrout and back again to Denise Levertov.
The Mystery of Deep Candor
Tags: Cezanne, Denise Levertov, Gertrude Stein, language poetry, Mark Goble, Matisse, media, Metropolitan Museum, modernism, museum exhibit, Picasso, Rae Armantrout, technology