Gertrude Stein: Devouring Her Son Part 2!

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0:11This is Raquel and Chelsea, and you're listening to Baroque Bitches. Welcome to Baroque Bitches, your art history gossip podcast. I'm Chelsea. I'm Raquel. And we're going to get into the down and dirty tea on this high-brow fancy art and history.

0:51History. Oh, my God. Thank God we're getting back into this one. Oh, my God. I'm like, only now am I calming down from all this steam that was coming out of last episode. It's too hardcore. It's so intense. It's so hardcore. You guys, it's just – She's the most integral person, like Peggy Guggenheim. She's it. She is it. She's the one. And right now we're recording February 17th, Lunar New Year.

1:23Lunar New Year. Happy Lunar New Year. It's a chaotic time, and I feel like our Gertie is just too relevant for us to, like – We're going to – this is part two out of three. We're having a love affair, and it's with Gertrude Stein. Yeah. And it's just too relevant because it's just – and she does say things like history repeats itself and stuff like that. So it's just – it's a perfect person to get into right now. We want to go deep on this.

1:55And we want to get into this fiery energy. We are officially in the year of the fire horse. We made it. Yeah. We got out of the snake's skin. We're out of – we're off of the ground. We're bigger. We're better. We're getting out of it. We're getting out of it, and we're going to get ready for really crazy energy. Not only that, solar eclipse and new moon in Aquarius, all on the same day, all today. So if you're in – I think it's South America can see the solar eclipse this time around.

2:32So if you're in, like, Chile and Argentina and stuff, I think you're going to be able to see it. So be careful. Don't stare at it. But, you know – and it's supposed to have, like, a big fiery ring around it. So it's supposed to be really cool. Oh, cute. And intense and, like, kind of prophetic and weird. I will say that we had this huge eclipse two years ago, and that was, like – like, I might be a traveling eclipser now. Like, eclipse chaser. Because that was, like, such an ethereal experience.

3:05Loved it. It's different. Big fan of the eclipse. Twilight and otherwise. Big fan. Big fan. Yes. Yes, the dead skin is gone, and we did the shadow work that was forced upon us in the year of the snake, and now we're moving forward very fast on fire. Yes. The horse does not take her time. She doesn't dilly-dally. She gets it done right now. And new moon in Aquarius. Aquarius is revealing the ugly truths, obviously.

3:36We have no problem telling you how like it is. We've revealed, and we're destroying old power structures and making room for the future. Finally.

3:48We have – A reckoning is coming. I've got some planets. I've got Uranus and Mars fucking shit up for, like, a very specific Gemini right now. Well, I love the magical stuff happening that people are, like, doing his charts and stuff. But just remember, a little Baroque bitch's PSA when you're doing magic and stuff. Just remember, they've got witches, too. Yeah. And not these fake TikTok MAGA witches. Like, these bitches are expensive, and they work in the shadows.

4:22So protect your energy, and then you can get pissed off and put shit in the freezer and bury stuff. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I don't know if it – yeah. I don't know if it makes you feel better or worse, but our girl literally says, it is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself. Yes. I was like, is it soothing? Normally, that feels, like, so ominous, right? Yeah. That, like, never has the tone of, like, things are going to get better. It has the tone of, like, history repeats itself in a bad way.

4:53But we've got to remember, it does repeat itself in a good way, too, right? Totally. Trudging forward in the right direction. Take nine steps back, ten steps forward. That's one step in the right direction, right? Keep going. Yeah. We're going to get through this, guys. Yeah. We're going to be okay. We're going to be okay. So we might as well get into it because there's just so much. I had to squeeze out another. There's – it's – Listen, I think I speak for everybody. When I say, take your time.

5:24We're not rushing through Gertrude. Gertie deserves as many parts as she needs. She was – Totally. Totally. And we're having – yeah. I mean, if we want to have a love affair and a longstanding one with Gertrude Stein, let us do it. It's our fucking podcast. If you want to hear about other – If you want to hear about other artists, you know where to check us out on Patreon. Hello. Or paid other things. Hello. Okay. Okay. Let's get into it. Let's go.

5:54Let's visualize. the morning after that uncanny feeling it feels like you're wearing your own skin last night decisions were made hearts were broken bridges were burned we murdered our past selves

6:29but our bodies are still intact damaged and naked but functioning now that our minds embrace our new identities we want to move forward but our permeable skin is exposed to nature's harsh elements and needs time to heal changing the physical form takes longer than a night our muscles have difficulty with change and they'll unconsciously continue to carry old wounds last night we pulled out from our bodies the arrows from our enemies the swords from our leaders and the

7:02jagged knives from our families those always cause the most damage we bled together different weapons different wounds same color we've decided as a collective to heal together to build strength and to protect each other because we know deadlier weapons are being developed weapons more penetrable than swords or arrows and we know that we aren't the only collective who use blood for strength but today we rest and try to avoid picking our scabs because we know those old scars

7:38will remain forever which brings us to our gossip topic gertrude stein devouring her sons part two oh my god this is so topical oh my god it gets so crazy it's so crazy it's so crazy so crazy we left off so if you don't remember if you haven't listened to it yet go check out part

8:11one first not while you're driving don't do anything come to a stop and then you can go back to part siri play baroque bitches part one gertrude stein oh no my my phone's actually listening to me stop okay sorry oh yeah this is where shit starts to get pretty crazy so we left off if you don't remember we left left off at gertie leaving america after her devastating heartbreak after hot toxic ass

8:45may chose mabel over her and failing out of toxic sexist ass johns hopkins medical school so she's that's like one of those moments where you're like why is this happening and then you look back later and you're like oh okay oh that's why because the rest of your life's gonna happen gritty it's okay i had to yeah because we had to get we had to figure out how to get right now she's freaking out freaking she's freaking out and she fucked everything off so hard that she moved to paris from the east coast to live in her brother leo's crazy art hoard of an apartment like you do

9:18like i would do that i would totally of like you're in paris you got a room like i'm coming we're doing this yeah we'll figure it out do it for the plot and this whole time while gertie was in school leo has already been collecting a shit ton of these insane modern art paintings and dealing with this equally insane art dealer both really confident in knowing that these paintings are the future of art so gertie does feel back in her element surrounded by avant-garde art with her

9:53favorite bro and her new lesbian identity yes and we talked about her first book qed one of the first icon one of the most iconic pieces of lesbian literature to me that's really her coming out story right and last time i didn't really get a chance to dive into the context of really being a lesbian at this time because it is really complicated and i think it will help with understanding where our girl's identity is right now now in the u.s being an open lesbian was not

10:28only seen as taboo but it was dangerous and illegal yeah the term lesbian was a recognized medical term yeah you gotta be crazy to not be attracted to men i guess being an out lesbian could get you fired from your job it could destroy you and your family's reputation and it could even get you institutionalized because it was seen as a quote moral corruption right not only that just living

10:58with another woman would be difficult because most american women had no independent income or property rights or legal autonomy yeah like you weren't even allowed to own property so even if you went in the were roommates direction it was almost impossible to keep the house afloat unless you had some kind of general generational wealth or you knew a guy yeah like you needed like a male sponsor you still need some kind of guy yeah to fucking buy property and assets and shit we were literally forced to marry

11:31these guys because we had no rights the bar is in hell you guys that's how bad it was we had to marry these fucking guy whenever they say this shit about the statistics of women not getting married and it's like no we we actually didn't really want to marry you before but we had we like had to we had to there was no options now there was a thing called a boston marriage in the united states and it was called it because there was a shit ton of college educated women living in boston and kind of the surrounding

12:03areas and because they're lesbians or they're not lesbians they just thought marriage was the long con that it is and want to focus on their careers it became socially acceptable to have two financially independent women living together and they weren't necessarily viewed as as gay couples so we're like this is like the one progressive pocket of boston exactly and even then it's like these women exactly a nuisance and eventually they'll get married once they're done with their silly

12:40nursing school they'll let this we'll let them do this for now exactly however that's america that's not france she's going to france what's going on in france she's coming into a culture that accepts quote eccentric relationships for the most part yeah so while homosexual couples were more accepted and even embraced in some circles they still had no legal marital or parental rights

13:11however being a homosexual being in a homosexual relationship was legal there were fewer instances of institutionalization and overall pretty safe to express your love in paris it was chic to dress androgynous or gender non-conforming love can be experimental in paris even between straight couples so two women in a relationship could even be seen as kind of fashionable it's like yeah chic oh you're with a woman now oh wow wow wow fun artsy hot there were even a ton of spaces

13:51available for openly queer people there were iconic lesbian bars like le monocle and la petite chamier they were open to everyone but there's specifically girl girly bars do the amount of specifically lesbian bars in paris at this time is wild and san francisco needs to take notes dude like it's it's insane these are all specific not just gay bars specifically girl bars yeah of let me paris you're doing something

14:23i can do it right i can totally understand why gertie feels so comfortable here she's writing she's developing her identity developing her style she's meeting avant-garde artists and showing her and leo's art collection to anyone and everyone intellectual bohemians are everywhere coming over at all hours to talk about the work so she's no longer alienated she's actually very overwhelmed by all of her new open-minded

14:54friends so much so that she had to establish office hours like you can't you can't stop by willy-nilly like i'm doing something oh my god that's so funny that's so like midwest like oh and just pop over just pop over they're just gonna stop by they're just gonna pop over and it would be in it would be a situation where she's like i can't get any writing done i'm distracted at all hours of the day none of like doesn't strike me as like the most like uh social like she's more like independent

15:28yeah like i think i think she was definitely social but in a way that was different for any other woman at the time so she was very like and that keep in mind it's still leo's realm so it's not she's not gertrude stein yet like right she's not like they're not coming like to like knocking at her door like tell me what to do totally more just like quit fucking getting drunk and passing out on my couch totally and arguing and yelling and yeah and and yelling about matisse so she was

16:04like listen you guys let's pick a day of course saturday so everybody they had these saturday salons where everyone can come over on saturday at at any time and this brings us to the quote which has two meanings matisse brought people and this was before matisse was the golden boy of modern art and fauvism that we all know and love we will have yeah we'll do it we will have to get away from the french guys a little bit at this point god and matisse but we'll get into him at one point he was

16:37a scandal even in bohemian circles the steins immediately bought woman with a hat a painting so shocking that critics called it a pot of paint thrown in the public's face but of course leo and gertie were like yeah this guy's a genius genius he's a genius and whether or not their circle even liked the work they still wanted to see it so matisse brought people is a

17:09true statement and not only that but matisse himself was so happy that someone's actually buying his painting that he would bring his friends to show off the work and his new patrons like hey look see i'm relevant yes validated these people like look they like me why don't they seem smart they do it yeah i mean women in the hat that's the one you know it's the woman in the giant hat it's like how is her neck supporting this you see fauvism in the dictionary and next to it is a

17:44picture of a woman in the hat is the woman in the hat she's all different colors she got really tiny chin she's like oh yeah she has a weird pointy chin i think she's a redhead but you never know and he's using a bunch of unnatural colors to give her tones in her face and yeah and set the mood he's getting weird it's weird it's too weird all the fauvist all the fauvist faces do look like so i don't know somehow dead inside to me well we will talk about faces soon

18:18so the saturday salons were born as a way to establish boundaries and crowd control so the first few salons were really led by leo he was the established force in paris and gertie isn't gertrude yet she's still she's still absorbing and the salons were still very male-coded these dudes were loud egotistical and not refined in the sense that gertie was used to the amount of damage that all that cigarette smoke did to these paintings is so bad so shout out to

18:51all the conservators that had to clean these bitches and they did they didn't care they the paintings weren't priceless yet they weren't even fucking dry i they didn't care about about conserving these paintings yeah i mean don't you remember damn it like in school or even after school just giving away art like yeah still now just here take it it doesn't have any value to me yeah you keep the ones that you really like or you know and you price them based on feelings

19:24totally but but do you need a painting because i got a bunch like you can take a couple if you want like the energies the crowds of discussions this is the fuel that kept people coming and bringing more people and more artists and more painting yeah they want to party they want to be a part of something and they want to party and they want to stroke their egos and stroke their intellectual academic blah blah blah blah all that good stuff yeah they want they want to show off they want to get into deep conversations and challenge each other and yeah and this is the steins that's the

19:57steins whole shtick yeah is being academic we are academic oh we are so intellectual intellectual yes oh my god giuseppe giuseppe is licking my feet he's oh my god he loves it giuseppe you're an intellectual yes he loves gertrude stein leo and gertie were constantly rearranging their apartment making sure to showcase the most controversial work for their next saturday salon and the salon doesn't get the woman-centered makeover that it needed

20:33until a few years later when gertie meets a girl yes okay you my favorite person in this whole fucking place alice b toklas the t is so good with this bitch okay okay meeting alice is a key turning point for our girl but before we get into the relationship let's get into this new girl who's she s l alice who are you who are you i had to throw

21:14in an alice in wonderland reference for my mom oh shout out terry hi terry oh you the the um caterpillar always always kind of kind of scared me ah yeah he's terrifying oh like oh my god the mushroom of course okay sorry that was my vocal stem for the day so alice babette toklas damn yeah babe yeah she was born april 30th 1877 in san francisco making

21:49her a strong determined practical and stubborn taurus love a taurus but they are not always the easiest signs to read especially especially for a head in the clouds aquarius like our gertie but a taurus could be kind of that grounding stability this is the this is the relationship in my household exactly you've got a lot of taurus energy it's a lot for me don't like to move and you guys have moved across country several times that must have been

22:23so uncomfortable for these shows you how convincing i am no i'm just kidding seriously of like when they're the worst people to move and it's oh god and all their stuff that they love and us aquarius are always like big ideas of not a lot of practicality just like no who cares we can do this who cares about this thing and they're like no this is my favorite thing oh my god you feel you're not sent out as sentimental as a taurus and but i think but i think this is

22:57kind of the grounding that that are great it's a good it's a good dynamic we need somebody to hold us to the ground like we are the balloons and we need somebody to be the little girl but you live here though yeah like you live here we actually have to deal with just living here right now so why don't you relax on that i that's a fun idea but but we need to like you know practical yes yeah we need to be practical anyway our alice grew up in a middle class polish jewish household her dad was another

23:33fabulous grocer and i know it's pronounced grosser grossier that sounds crazy grosser we call it grocery store i know i don't know why i don't know why it's grocery store grocery store that's not right it's horrible that's i'm screaming inside no all of my the hair on my back is standing tall grosser i will not stand grocery store no it's grocery grocery

24:08wait i'm questioning everything i know now we're sorry grocery store grocery no no that's gross absolutely not gross grocery get out of here grocery anyway he was a great grosser uh so i'll grow okay so so he had a he had a little bit of money but not a ton okay yeah and growing up alice loved playing the piano and even went to the university of washington to study music

24:38which is okay very touristy thing to do daily practice repetition rhythmic routine and diving into a very specific niche that they know they can master that that's the vibe that's the vibe with them so she's in school chilling playing scales or something and it's gone no yeah mom got sick and we don't know with what but we knew it was something bad and we knew she was into it we don't we have no idea what it was something that deathy something deathy

25:13something deathy yeah we weren't sure oh and alex was called back to san francisco from college to help care for her because she's a chick you know i got a caregiver you're a caregiver now so bye bye music hello merch nurturing mother role so remember gertie lost her mom at a young age and longed for that female stability yeah yeah yeah alice is taking on a mother role really early on and sacrificing for her life and her family so it's like her normal happy place of where she's

25:47her safe places being a caregiver they're developing into the relationship that that they're going to need for each other right so now of course because gertie and alice are beloved historical figures and beloved queer figures researchers and historians are afraid to like get into into anything problematic with their relationship but that's why we're here and i see you alice i see you even way down in that rabbit hole we see you and um anyway so we're

26:20gonna get into like their dynamic too of like okay okay alice is doing a lot okay so anyway alice is helping mom and inevitably she dies after a long battle with something the unknown disease whatever it was yeah sorry she wasn't doing good and she died and the fam gets hit again with the deadliest urban fire in u.s history then the 1906 san francisco fire and the same fire ansel saw growing up um it's just it

26:56affected so many people it destroyed 80 of the city so wild killed 3 000 people and left 250 000 people homeless so wild 250 000 that's all of them all of the people were homeless that's crazy yeah homes businesses a whole ass neighborhoods gone from the planet so alice alone no mom no home no music career she went to paris well like you do i love this for them this escapism like well

27:31you know fuck it i'll go to paris mom's dead city's gone let's go to paris you got nothing yolo yeah get out of here i got a friend over there and we have again she's she's still in these kind of artsy intellectual circles and so september 8th 1907 she leaves for paris and september 9th 1907 she meets gertie wow this happens quickly the next day that's wild so alice is an artsy american

28:03and by this time the stein home became the spot to go if you're an artsy foreigner looking for connections sure alice knew harriet levy another writer from san francisco who would attend the stein's salons and thought alice would fit right in totally yeah no shit and as soon as as soon as alex alice walked through those doors and met our girl it was um over done over done oh hello who is that i've been waiting for this moment totally vibes total of like who the gertie

28:41immediately noticed her quiet introverted peaceful touristy presence i need that and alice after all the trauma of losing her mom and literal city this feels like home like she found a home so alice attends the salons all the time quietly observing the art listening to the readings and watching everyone argue about saison she would slowly start helping out by like setting a little chairs greeting guests serving

29:14wine and then it quickly escalated to helping organize the salons all together so she was this she was this kind of authoritarian presence without being this big loud man that leo was so we'll get into that oh god and of course gertie loved this she's like she's into my salons she's like quietly observing like almost a little above these people but also humbled by their opinions so

29:45alice is just so balanced and gertie loves this but leo leo didn't get her at all okay so remember leo is in charge still he's the art connoisseur and he thought alice was weird he didn't get why gertie liked her that he thought that they seemed like opposites which they were which is what they needed in the first place so he's like it's she's so totally different than you

30:17why do you like her she's like i like i want that i want that it's a yin and yang dude with us we need to be grounded we need people that are different than us to keep us interested yeah you guys can be the dreamers while you have someone there setting up chairs and shit yeah exactly when you need all the chairs we need to feel interesting to the person and also stimulated by the person but not like overshadowed yeah interesting dynamic and that totally is gertie

30:52and alice's dynamic of she alice really gave her permission to to shine yeah but then it's like what are you doing for alice i don't okay we'll get into it so so leo thought alice was too quiet and intense unlike the artists that would come around who are fucking yelling all the time yeah like they just want to party and have fun and alice is like okay no i'm just gonna i'll look at the art and and give you my opinion and if you yell at me i'm just gonna i'm not gonna yell back at you

31:24leave i'm gonna okay and it was so it must have been embarrassing i'm like i'm yelling at this lady that's not giving me the reaction that i want she's not getting she's not getting fired up she's just standing there being quiet it's i just alice would definitely be someone i want to i would want to meet i feel like i would love i would love that because it's like you don't have to just like integrate and stoop and like do what everybody else is doing you can be your own person performance

31:56yeah you don't it's not performative that's a great way of putting it and alice she wasn't very impressed by leo either oh okay she didn't really like this is the opinion that i really want and she wasn't she didn't really agree with his interpretations of the artwork which of course pissed him off because he knew that alice was there for gertie not him obviously yeah and leo could feel the shift it's no longer leo and gertrude it's starting to become gertrude and alice

32:31so i get it yeah yeah and we'll get into like leo's mindset too because it is this is hard because this was his house like it's just like these bitches just coming over here i also see his side you know you move in and now your girlfriend move it's just the dynamic is changing and i don't like it yeah i don't like it yeah okay i see that there's a and leo and gertie were like they were almost twins they were like the yeah the connection and now

33:06he's seeing that that's starting to fade and leo even started to dislike gertie's writing too so he said her new now it's getting personal yeah now we're getting into the art and and we'll get into their conflicting opinions on the art too which was really the catalyst too he said her new experimental writings were unreadable and embarrassing how dare you yeah no they were revolutionary and inspired by cues cubism sorry you don't get it sorry don't get it and that's

33:39another thing that leo didn't get was cubism so we're gonna get into that of what's that the steins saw this painting let them was el da avignon oh yeah that hablo fucking picasso and everything changed by pp by pp by little pp by palms so let's let's get into it before this leo and pablo were buddies so leo knew pablo before gertie even moved in he was he loved pablo's

34:17early work he loved the sezani style he was painting in the blue period the rose period paintings all of that keeping that classy classical structure but painting with immediacy knowing that pablo was a classically trained artist who did master realism but was also stoked on sezani remember the father of us all quotes pablo said that and fun fact he made this statement so many times and in various

34:50ways he also said that sezani was the mother of us all too so i'm down to make that the same yeah no i kind of love that of mother yes sezani is the mother of us all yeah let's not forget women do 99.9 percent of the work on we make the thing we make the thing we make it yeah we make it we make the people so he loved sezani and copied him yeah pablo also said good artist copy great artist

35:22steal and we're also fun fact on that there's so many quotes on this guy it's just like it's getting annoying he's got some good one i mean love to hate him but the one-liners are good he's got great one-liners and um we don't know if he actually said good artist copy great artist steal but we do know that he was directly quoted saying when there's anything to steal i steal which i like that one better i like that one better if there's something to steal i'm stealing it i'm fucking taking it

35:54and i don't want to get too much into picasso lore because you need to check out our francois um g-lo episode oh it's so good and you'll know all about this predator but he did actually respect gertie even though she was a chick and it was actually alice that did not approve of his various affairs and the emotional damage that he inflicted on his lovers and muses and she would actually try to protect gertie from him because she knew that pablo was manipulative

36:26and volatile especially towards women somebody who's that like well versed at such a time where like there really wasn't a whole doesn't feel like there was a whole lot of like moral police at all no he was a fucking it's just oh i just don't approve of your of your relationships and it's like no he was he was groomy and horrible and would definitely have been in the epstein files for sure oh he would have been on that i he would have lived on that island that fucking guy okay

36:59we're not going there we're not going there going there alice so i love that alice knew that he was trash um but she did respect the work though he she did respect i'm just such an alice stan after all this research we need each other even powerful women need other women yes absolutely it's not just the power don't let them fool you into thinking otherwise yeah we need each other yeah because we protect each other we can see through stuff and before alice gertie and pablo actually had a really

37:31strong bond especially after leo started to dislike his work so and then alice comes along and takes skirt away it's like a little taste of your own medicine anyway cubism i was talking about cubism so cubism pooped right out of saison's impressionism which is which is different than monet and manet and all of them right saison was the shift into modernism even though he's used he's using similar colors

38:01brushstrokes and everyday subjects that the impressionists use he's not really doing impressionism though he's still using classical structures of like the renaissance and stuff he famously said i want to make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums so he wants to take impressionism and make it like renaissance-y he wants to like elevate it and like make it good enough to put in a museum it's not just an impression i am building something here like i'm building a

38:33composition and saison wanted to reveal the underlying structure of of reality while using the feely colors dramatic light and immediate strokes of the impressionist so he's building on a two-dimensional surface and to do that you must use different perspectives of the same object but this is no longer an illusion of depth like in the art museums the surface is flat because it's a canvas it's like the map of the object plus the feeling of the moment at the same time right

39:08thus pablo comes in with his giant boner for this whole thing his whole stuff and it's like you can be technical and use all that technical shit to like shift away from the norm right totally so it's all still based in like hard-rooted skills that are learned and developed over time and for that reason should be like well revered yeah classical stuff renaissance stuff so he's he's messing with

39:39that he's figuring this out of impressionism looks more like a sketch i want it to be that immediacy with classical structure of the art in the museum so it has has a weight to it yeah and and and leo and pablo had a great relationship before all this because pablo was copying saison and then pablo started copying something else to push saison's concepts further africa and holy shit we're so gross we're

40:11talking about african art enough or like at all and that's changing this year you guys yes 2026 we're doing we are not going to continue to be part of the problem so it's it's gross because african art is actually the mother of a song so that's actually that that's mother and i hate that we're talking about african art in the context of european art but here we are here we are it's me hi i'm the problem it's me dude i i do be quoting that song all the time

40:43hi and the fucking problem so yeah we're we're gonna we're gonna be better anyway pablo saw african masks in paris museums freaked out painted la desmoselle d'avignon and everything changed the masks were not decoration they were a toolful ritual they were the embodiment of spirits and these african artists and practitioners were able to change the structure of the human face using simple

41:13geometric forms and these guys are also using multiple perspectives of the face on the same flattened plane like the front and the sides of the face can be combined or distorted to express all sides on one like doing modern art way before fucking paris and not only are african artists clearly math nerds they're also understand like the uncanny feeling that slightly simplifying the human

41:43face can be extremely emotive to the viewer good bad ugly vibes and not only did they do abstraction before it had a name but they were doing romanticism and expressionism too it's art in its purest form and when it's used as a ritual like a spell to open a portal to find truth and purpose and all that good woo stuff that we like now pablo and his buddies were not trying to lift up african art they are stealing

42:14it while continuing to deem it primitive or instinctual to this day which is obviously false because white people can't believe that early african artists founded modernism while we're over here like not bathing getting close to where we eat like where'd this plague come from dude you have shit on you wash your and and african artists are over here creating modern art as we know it and we're over here getting the fucking plague because there's shit all over our hands

42:45stupid stupid anyway anyway and like throwing shit in the river you drink out of that you're so like you fucking dummy what the fuck you're up god you're stupid oh my god wash washing your hands no that's witchy's hands we won't do it we won't do it we'll get the plague

43:16instead we don't want to be vain so we're gonna continue to have shit all over it it's wild like how could you be proud of that anyway anyway pablo brock matisse madigliani who has been requested several times we're so here for it because he was a fucking slut all these dudes all these dudes were looking at africa polynesia ancient iberia greece japan

43:47ancient egypt ancient persia knowing that they were all onto something for a while while the west is missing the entire fucking plot white guys called it cubism right so i guess that's what we we're calling it arriving for a century oh my god it's fine it's cubes okay so dumb where do the signs fit into the cubes so little old pablo made a pretty cool portrait of our

44:18girl that he insisted was the beginning of cubism so you can check out portrait of gertrude stein i mean this is when you type in gertrude stein this is the thing that shows up most things about this portrait are pretty normal for the time immediate chunky brushstrokes bold lighting a portrait of a normal person instead of nobility but there's one huge glaring difference the face is a mask and when the salon looked at this portrait they were pretty thrown off they were saying that it

44:53didn't look like gertrude stein and then one of the most iconic exchanges happened between gertrude and pablo gertrude said i do look like that and pablo said you will okay okay yes you're very intellectual okay we get it pablo you're gonna be famous everybody will remember this painting forever oh i mean i hate that he's right these two bitches really do get each other though yeah her

45:24her portrait is true because of the structure and the presence not necessarily the features it's her composition how pablo sees her and gertrude the girl with these fluid changing shifting identities vibed with that like i do perform in a mask everyone has to wear a mask and it's like wait a second what is masks i'm like but leo fucking hated it so he said a lot of things including oh my god i'm so excited what are

45:56the burns so yeah he said a lot of things about cubism and pablo's new work in general he says it's a mistake pablo has made a hash of it it destroys the figure there's no harmony in it and this is not a painting okay yeah cubism became because he say it doesn't mean it's so it exactly okay leo it's just you're so smart you wouldn't think that you would be open-minded to is your ego that huge

46:27i think it is an ego thing you just want to be right you have to be right you're taking a hard stance i get it okay i understand i could understand if you just don't like it it's not a pretty picture but i can't if you say it's a mistake and that's not a painting like that's that's shallow yeah that's like low blow and just like not true yeah so leo understood saison's proto-cubism because it was still structured sound beautiful classical and human but he thought pablo's cubism flattened out

47:02all the humanness in the painting he thought these paintings were ugly chaotic and missing the compositional harmony that saison mastered leo thought art was going to get more beautiful and harmonious not throwing the classical structure away but the cubists weren't throwing it away they were rethinking it they were introducing non-western art forms that were new to them what happens when you mix european classicism with fucking everything else and all this classical versus cubist war is

47:37going on in the house and in the salons tensions were high they needed a humble guardian to protect the piece well mostly gertie's piece alice moved in so for years alice had been quietly observing the artists managing the visitors managing the household chores creating a space where gertie could write she put in the work to establish her rightful place in the salon and in gertie's life and there's

48:08no more room for leo and his big fat intellectual head you and your rigid hatred for cubism and my got out of here has to go sorry leo so leo just can't tolerate alice's quiet judgy presence in the house when she after she moved in his home is infiltrated by an art form that he hates he feels that gertie is rejecting real art for a mistake and he hates pablo and gertie's relationship

48:40so he moves he moves okay bye i do kind of feel bad for him though it's like his house yeah it is i really just came here and fucking pushed me out like what the fuck of like i would even understand if you like kicked them out i would like i would be sad about it but i think i kind of understand of like you guys i'm uncomfortable in my own space now it's another example of if you can just move like if you feel like you're taking up space in your own house it's

49:11not your house anymore right i mean i think leo's ego was the actual catalyst in the move but i'm just surprised that he couldn't see the value in cubism or maybe he was just jealous at this point right or jealous of like gertie coming in and taking his friends and like now she has this girlfriend who's this kind of manager of the of my salons yeah it's just sad that he's so smart he can't be open to no ideas it's crazy that's like how i felt

49:42about middle bangs and now it's like they're everywhere but i finally gave in you know yeah you've got to get with the times dude or you'll be left in the dust left and he doesn't only move he takes the saisons and the renois while gertie keeps the picasso's and the matisse's so this is like a divorce it is they never reconcile he stays estranged from her oh my god oh that's so sad yeah i have like you guys were like twins that's like so lame you never really came back and like

50:21i don't it was yeah it seems really intense and it's kind of honestly like it makes gertie look kind of cold i don't know what was going on in the household of like what the feeling was but it's kind of like god you really couldn't work it out i mean this is where the bad side of aquarians come out of like wow okay oh you're mad at me i'm sorry that's your problem and i was looking up to like how did gertie feel about was she sad she said it was inevitable yeah she wasn't sad she wasn't sad about her favorite brother her partner since birth leaving but she also said

50:57leo preferred saisons to me so so maybe he was just being a giant dickhead i guess he chose he chose saisons he couldn't even be bothered to try to see her side on this they're both so stubborn yeah of like god okay okay bye my sibling forever i just okay and immediately after leo left alice and gertie rearranged the paintings in the apartment took over the space with all the saisons gone they could showcase all the cubist work the salons became way more structured with gertie positioned

51:31at the center of the discussion so now we have the king ruling the realm this time was gertie's most confident and productive time she felt in control of her space and her visitors without leo's ego and with alice's dedication she was able to write and publish this time tender buttons in 1914 so this book is literary cubism so she's using everyday life as the inspiration the book is split

52:04up into three chapters objects food and rooms and she writes rhythmically and fractured she's restructuring writing as we know it keeping the classical themes while creating meaning in the process of understanding the world not just describing it it's about the journey not the destination let's get weird yeah it's getting hippy dippy i'm into it so the first line in the whole ass book a carafe that is a blind glass um it's funny it's funny because that is something that we do learn

52:42in classical art training not to perceive the object or face or body or whatever it is for what its name is it's not an object or a face or body or a carafe it's shapes yeah it's not it's not a pipe and yes we've heard the bulk magritte requests like we're he's coming he's coming not a pipe so i think i think this line is kind of about leo too so she's refusing to see the old names for things the old ways how

53:17others have perceived and giving meaning to a thing she gives it new meaning she's fine she's fine with not understanding something right off the bat while leo held onto history and denounces new perspectives right and new forms of art sure like no no no no no this is i'm holding on this is on this is so important this is like so important to her that she is like no and he can't be objective in that neither of them can yeah yeah and this new fangled concept of book was actually published

53:54and read and yeah the normie the normies we don't get it hated it calling it an outrage on the english language verbal gibberish and unreadable one critic this one's funny one critic saying it's like trying to eat alphabet soup with a fork that's pretty good you guys aren't there yet they're not there yet gertie literally doesn't give a fuck what the normies are doing remember she's an aquarius

54:26yeah we don't care you're normal you're sheeple you guys just don't get it she's only she's only interested in her peers and of course alice loved it calling it that's all that matters the masterpiece of the time and gertrude's most perfect work so it's like yeah that's all that matters pablo loved it yeah pablo loved it totally got it and gertie definitely um cares for his opinion and he was doing the same shit with painting so he's like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah totally you

54:58get it you get it you get it you get it and all these polarizing thoughts on her writing just fuels the fire she continues to write in this style freeing herself from the constraints of language using words like brushstrokes and fighting against the powers that be all while europe is about to combust from within which is where we'll have to end on this

55:28i'm so sorry i'm sorry we could not i'm like dude i haven't even got into the wars oh my god the war i haven't even gotten to hemingway like there's so much there's so much this is so good though this deserves time yeah i think yeah and i think perfect timing with everything i'm going on right now oh my god so uh we're gonna just take a second to breathe collectively breathe in and breathe out

56:02yeah i started doing tai chi in the morning oh tai chi's so good let me tell you tai chi's so good that's the business highly recommend yes yeah i'm so sorry all of these white people now are doing chinese things we're so sorry but it's so good i feel so energizing i'm like you guys we've been doing this forever that's why we live we live to 100 and you guys i get it hug the tree and ground the tree toss the moon to the sky oh it's so good drinking ginseng and shit fucking hot water in the

56:37morning i'm i'm so funny it's so funny it's i'm i'm sorry chinese listeners and chinese american listeners of like that we've all become we just want to be healthy we're dying we're dying we're trying everything i steal what is worth no and this is dude this is this is just like what pablo was doing with africa of like look at this new thing i'm like it's not not new i acknowledge that it's not new i've been seeing ladies do it in the park forever and now i'm like can i hang out with you

57:13and totally i'm not going to but you guys are so much more i get it now yeah they're like way stronger than me and have way more endurance and lymphatic drainage yeah all this good stuff we're doing it we're doing it because we want to be healthy yeah i'm trying to drain all of my lymph nodes this year people are like rolling their eyes i'm like oh ginger and hot water that's new that's a new concept give me all the turmeric all of the turmeric oh my god we're so gross because we don't

57:45have we all we have is unhealthy shit so we need we need some ginger and hot water yes so badly i need that literally right now i do i won't give up iced drinks though i won't give up it's too hard it's so refreshing okay listen anyway oh my gosh so we're gonna squeeze we couldn't squeeze it all in and no so so we're gonna have a part three because it's just way too much tea of like there's just i haven't even got into the crazy stuff this is worth it so it's fine it's fine everybody will

58:19agree right guys well some of you won't because you're contrarians and that's okay you guys who are contrarians don't leave us a review those that like us five stars on spotify apple podcast leave us a like comment reach out to us on instagram even though we're not really we're trying to take a social media break but we'll try and check in with you all yeah we're gonna do our best this year it's listen that's all we can do horse we're on business this year happy new year

58:49yes and we will be back soon and if you can't do any of that it's totally fine don't worry about it i'm not kidding we don't care it's fine we're still friends just keep listening well we love you bye bye bye

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