Paris in the Spring with Picasso (review)
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It's a Saturday in Paris, and Gertrude Stein's friends are going about their artistic days prior to meeting up at her house for the evening salon. Guillaume Apollinaire finds an idea for a poem in the streets and tells his girlfriend, Marie Laurencin; Max Jacob works on his memoir while Pablo Picasso labors over a painting; come nightfall, they all wend their way toward the Stein house, where Gertrude and Alice prepare for the evening's festivities. The direct address to the reader is invitingly inclusive, and there's a combination of as-it-happens and bird's-eye omniscience conferred by the present-tense text and the following of multiple individual lives that separate and converge. There's not a lot of story, though, especially considering the length of the text; in contrast to Winter's Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude (BCCB 1/09), there's also insufficient evocation of the circle's artistic sensibility to give readers an idea of what, beyond a social life, the subjects shared, and the opening biographical gallery (which focuses on only a few of the featured figures) doesn't really compensate. The visual evocation of Paris, however, is a festive treat: Priceman's art, high-colored gouache daubs favoring sweet, smoky blue and golden yellow and emphasized with zesty black lines, suggests both Raoul Dufy and Ludwig Bemelmans in its style and its joyful open-air views of the city. This account will work best with supporting or complementary material, perhaps as background information for dePaola's fanciful Bonjour, Mr. Satie (BCCB 3/91) or an introduction to an exploration of artistic circles in general or prewar Parisians in particular.
