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Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures
"After an astonishing, playful essay, the book opens into a revelatory combination of quotes, quips and 360 photos of Stein and her wildly brilliant circle."-- Elle
- GenresBiography
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
73 people want to read
About the author
Renate Stendhal
15 books19 followersDuring her school years in Berlin and Hamburg, Renate Stendhal pursued studies of music, singing, painting, and dancing. She majored in literature at Hamburg University, then moved to Paris in 1966 to focus on classical dance. After an engagement at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1970 and joined an experimental theater group. From 1975 to 1982, she worked in Paris as a cultural correspondent for German radio and press (Frankfurter Rundschau et al.) – an occupation she picked up again in 2005, writing cultural reviews for the international magazine Scene4. In Paris, she also worked for many years as a personal assistant for surrealist painter Meret Oppenheim.
With the beginning of the French and German feminist movements, Renate Stendhal became an activist and co-created (with Danish painter Maj Skadegaard) the first feminist multimedia show in Europe, “In the Beginning . . . of the End: A Voyage of Women Becoming” (1980). A year later, the show was recorded on film by Studio D of the National Film Board of Canada and shown at women's festivals and international film festivals. While touring with the film across Europe from 1980 to 1983, Renate Stendhal started giving workshops and lectures on women's creative and erotic empowerment. Her essays and articles appeared in major feminist magazines including Feministische Studien and EMMA.
During the eighties, she became the first German translator of feminist authors Susan Griffin, Audre Lord, Adrienne Rich, and others. In 1984, she accompanied Audre Lorde as a translator on a reading tour of Germany and Switzerland. She translated Gertrude Stein's only mystery novel, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, into German keine keiner and in 1989 created a photo-biography with parallel visual and textual readings of Stein's life, Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures. The English edition (Algonquin Books, 1994) earned a Lambda Award. In 2009, the photo-biography was republished and served as an inspiration for the exhibition "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories, Summer 2011", at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco and The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Renate Stendhal was involved in the educational programming surrounding the show and the parallel exhibition "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde", at SFMOMA. Her blog, quotinggertrudestein, followed the preparations, the "Summer of Stein" and the aftermath of the epochal exhibitions.
Since her move to California in 1986, she earned an MA in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in spiritual psychology, but chose not to pursue a license as a therapist. Instead, she chose a spiritual path, getting ordained as a minister by AIWP, the Association for the Integration of the Whole Person, practicing a different kind of listening and intuitive, common sense conversation. In 2005, she became a provost at the University of Integrative Learning), guiding students through MA and Ph.D. programs that reward students for their lifelong learning. In 2010-2011, she became a certified hCG practitioner in the Dr. Simeons weight-loss protocol based on hCG amino acids.
In the States, Renate Stendhal published Sex and Other Sacred Games (Times Books, 1989), co-authored with her life companion, author Kim Chernin, with whom she also co-authored the portrait of a young opera singer, Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song (HarperCollins, 1997). She wrote and illustrated a novel for young adults, The Grasshopper's Secret: A Magical Tale (EdgeWork Books, 2002), and continued her reflections on women and eros with True Secrets of Lesbian Desire: Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships (North Atlantic Books, 2003), originally published as Love's Learning Place: Truth as Aphrodisiac in Women's Long-Term Relationships(EdgeWork Books, 2002). Her most recent collaboration with Kim Chernin is Lesbian Marriage: A Love & Sex Forever Kit (Lesbian Love Forever, 2014) a quick reference guide and
With the beginning of the French and German feminist movements, Renate Stendhal became an activist and co-created (with Danish painter Maj Skadegaard) the first feminist multimedia show in Europe, “In the Beginning . . . of the End: A Voyage of Women Becoming” (1980). A year later, the show was recorded on film by Studio D of the National Film Board of Canada and shown at women's festivals and international film festivals. While touring with the film across Europe from 1980 to 1983, Renate Stendhal started giving workshops and lectures on women's creative and erotic empowerment. Her essays and articles appeared in major feminist magazines including Feministische Studien and EMMA.
During the eighties, she became the first German translator of feminist authors Susan Griffin, Audre Lord, Adrienne Rich, and others. In 1984, she accompanied Audre Lorde as a translator on a reading tour of Germany and Switzerland. She translated Gertrude Stein's only mystery novel, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, into German keine keiner and in 1989 created a photo-biography with parallel visual and textual readings of Stein's life, Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures. The English edition (Algonquin Books, 1994) earned a Lambda Award. In 2009, the photo-biography was republished and served as an inspiration for the exhibition "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories, Summer 2011", at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco and The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Renate Stendhal was involved in the educational programming surrounding the show and the parallel exhibition "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde", at SFMOMA. Her blog, quotinggertrudestein, followed the preparations, the "Summer of Stein" and the aftermath of the epochal exhibitions.
Since her move to California in 1986, she earned an MA in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in spiritual psychology, but chose not to pursue a license as a therapist. Instead, she chose a spiritual path, getting ordained as a minister by AIWP, the Association for the Integration of the Whole Person, practicing a different kind of listening and intuitive, common sense conversation. In 2005, she became a provost at the University of Integrative Learning), guiding students through MA and Ph.D. programs that reward students for their lifelong learning. In 2010-2011, she became a certified hCG practitioner in the Dr. Simeons weight-loss protocol based on hCG amino acids.
In the States, Renate Stendhal published Sex and Other Sacred Games (Times Books, 1989), co-authored with her life companion, author Kim Chernin, with whom she also co-authored the portrait of a young opera singer, Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song (HarperCollins, 1997). She wrote and illustrated a novel for young adults, The Grasshopper's Secret: A Magical Tale (EdgeWork Books, 2002), and continued her reflections on women and eros with True Secrets of Lesbian Desire: Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships (North Atlantic Books, 2003), originally published as Love's Learning Place: Truth as Aphrodisiac in Women's Long-Term Relationships(EdgeWork Books, 2002). Her most recent collaboration with Kim Chernin is Lesbian Marriage: A Love & Sex Forever Kit (Lesbian Love Forever, 2014) a quick reference guide and
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 10, 2018
This was a fascinating and accessible introduction to Gertrude Stein. Well, for me it was an introduction, because as much as I admire the idea of Gertrude Stein, I have always found her works daunting. This was an illuminating biography, composed mostly of Stein's own words, that helped me get a little bit of a grip on what Stein was thinking. I docked a star for the fact that the book slowed down and became less compelling towards the end, because Gertrude Stein's later works used language that might be a little more tethered to standard English, but are still exhausting to follow. The first 3/4 of the book, covering her early literary experimentation and associations with fellow geniuses like Picasso and Hemingway made it all worthwhile, though.
June 21, 2020
The book itself is a great book! It contains lots of photographs, quotes, and excerpts from Gertrude's writing, that, when put together, tell the story of Gertrude's life. The author did a great job of choosing the important parts of Gertrude's writing where she revealed insight into her life.
That being said, I really don't like Gertrude's writing style and was hoping for some more detached observer narrative, along with Gertrude's writing, to tell her life story. She kept fascinating company and I wanted to hear more stories about that, not in her own words. That's just my preference though, so if you are a big Stein fan and enjoy her writing, you'll like this. The pictures are great!
That being said, I really don't like Gertrude's writing style and was hoping for some more detached observer narrative, along with Gertrude's writing, to tell her life story. She kept fascinating company and I wanted to hear more stories about that, not in her own words. That's just my preference though, so if you are a big Stein fan and enjoy her writing, you'll like this. The pictures are great!
January 8, 2024
My library has three books related to Gertrude Stein. This, The Autobiography of Alice, and Four Saints. Admittedly I grabbed this because it had pictures… and I’m glad I did. It’s an incredibly unique format for a biography. I enjoyed it, yet at the same time struggled with the passages. Having never read any Stein before, her style is pretty tough to get through. I appreciate that it is broken up by other perspectives. I’m excited to read some of her work in its entirety now.
February 20, 2021
Good introduction to Stein, with lots of extracts from those works that can be really difficult to get into - say, Geography and plays; here you get a snippet, which, with Stein, can be a relief...
Not essential when you've read her, and around her in general, but not bad at all.
Not essential when you've read her, and around her in general, but not bad at all.
January 8, 2017
This is a short biography of Gertrude Stein filled with snippets of her writings and lots of pictures. It was very interesting but contained enough samples of Stein's writings to convince me that I'm not interested in reading anything else she wrote. She was big on repetition and wordplay and thought commas were for the feeble-minded. She was quite sure she was a genius but seemed rather pleasant and not conceited about it. She openly admitted to liking being lionized and petted. I couldn't make much sense of many of the samples that were quoted and didn't understand some of her theories, such as that sentences could not provide emotion but that paragraphs could.
March 12, 2008
This is about as fun an intro to Gertrude Stein as you'll get. Lots of fun pictures and good excerpts from her works. It's a great way to get into her stuff if you don't find the Mother Goose of Montparnasse all that captivating. Stein is hard reading (duh), but she teaches us a lot about language; that's not really the focus here. This is all about biography, but it's a hell of a story. I like to think if I'd been around 80 years ago I could've gotten into the rue de Fleurus---just once, anyway.
September 4, 2011
I disagreed with the author's premise that Stein liked being looked at as much as being read, and some of the editorial choices she made felt stilted to me. That said, I think the book reveals an incredible amount of research, and the combination of quotes from Stein and others with photographs was... well, vast. I really enjoyed flipping through it at first, opening to random pages like Chinese fortunes, and then I also felt it read well beginning to end.
January 13, 2017
Wonderful images, excerpts, and layout. Makes me want to go read all her work.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews