Story 5: Legacies

I got out of bed and headed for the drawing table with the thought, "Art. Literature. Marijuana. Homosexuality. Paris. Fun." and drew the first two strips of Gertrude’s Follies.
    – Tom Hachtman, interview, 2009


Stein has enjoyed a rich afterlife, especially within the American avant-garde. Immediately following her death, the interdisciplinary group of artists associated with Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Judson Church in New York City embraced Stein’s linguistic play, theater pieces, and operas. Innovators from John Cage and Merce Cunningham to Robert Wilson and Mark Morris claimed her as a posthumous collaborator. Feminists, lesbians, and gays looked to Stein as a foremother, an artistic radical who stood by her same-sex partner without embarrassment or fear. Pop artists, satirists, and cartoonists embroidered on her celebrity image. Postmodernists emphasized her crossing of interdisiplinary boundaries between media, her rejection of linear narrative, and the openness of her texts to multiple interpretations. During the second half of the twentieth century, scholars, activists, and artists made Stein an American cultural icon. Experimental practices in the arts continue to extend her reach into the twenty-first century.


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Click to enlarge imageCostume design for Gertrude S.
The Mother of Us All, Santa Fe
Opera production, 1976
Robert Indiana (born 1928)
Cut paper on board, 1976
Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Robert L. B. Tobin (1978.12.3)
© 2010 Morgan Art Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Click to enlarge imageLet Us Now Praise Famous
Women #3
(detail)
Deborah Kass (born 1952)
Silkscreen ink and acrylic on canvas, c. 1994–95
Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
© Deborah Kass
Click to enlarge imageGertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell
Edward Sorel (born 1929)
Pen, ink, and watercolor on paper, 1988
Courtesy Edward Sorel
© Edward Sorel
Photography by Matt Flynn
         
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Click to enlarge imageGertrude Steinem
Tom Hachtman (born 1948)
Airbrush on paper, 1984
Margaret and Bruce Kellner
© Tom Hachtman
Click to enlarge imageAngry Gertrude
Louise Fishman (born 1939)
Acrylic on paper, 1973
Courtesy of the artist and Cheim & Read, New York
© Louise Fishman
Photo courtesy Cheim & Read, New York