If one single individual is to be associated with encouraging Picasso to experiment with new styles, including Cubism, it would have to be Gertrude Stein. It is very difficult to define the relationship between Stein and Picasso, for she was more than a patroness to Picasso; she was also her intimate companion and friend. It is no coincidence that The Young Ladies of Avignon was produced the year after Stein first commissioned Picasso to paint her portrait. By the time Picasso started working on Gertrude Stein’s portrait he had become a consummate artist. Indeed, Picasso had traveled a long way from his early, realistic portraiture, through the “idealized sadness of his Blue and Rose periods, to classicizing and modeling his figures” (Hubbard, 2001). He had started to conceive the portrait as a subjective document, breaking away from the tradition of realistic and objective portraits. This inducement of subjectivity is essential to his Cubist works that were to come later. It is apt to say that the Portrait of Gertrude Stein is as much a modernist painting as it is a pre-Cubist one. But, the process of creating this landmark work in the career of the genius in discussion was not without its share of obstacles and delays. For example, it took Picasso close to three months and nearly a hundred sittings in the winter and spring of 1906 to complete this work. But the end result was worth the wait:
“After a summer break at the Spanish village of Gosol, he returned to paint in her face in a single day, giving it the mask-like appearance it holds today…The mask in `Gertrude Stein’ elicits different associations: obscurity, remoteness, obdurateness, implacability. Picasso had captured her essence through a dislocation of her features – her hooded eyes are at different levels, and the right eye is larger than the recessive, smaller left one. Through the distortions and dislocations, the artist created a disturbing and vital psychological presence. It would be just a few more steps into dissolving the figure completely and into cubism.” (Hubbard, 2001)
Another recurring theme in Picasso’s works is the concept of alienation. Along with such contemporaries of his as Paul Gauguin, Picasso surpassed the tradition of “the fin-de-siecle and symbolist questioning of life’s values and directions” (Hubbard, 2001). The remarkable thing about Picasso’s paintings is that they cause our minds to expand and explore in search of the implicit meaning in it. Arthur Danto compares the genius of Picasso with that of Bertrand Russell. At first, this might seem inappropriate. After all, one is a master of the arts and the other an intellectual and a mathematician. But in the minds of these two men, there is no such dichotomy. For instance, Russell compared his magnum opus Principia Mathematica to mellifluous music. Likewise, Picasso’s Cubist paintings could be compared with an intricate puzzle, the solution of which would require exercising of the intellect. The similarities between the two men do not stop there. In the lives of both these geniuses, women played an important role. More importantly, the relationships they had were not confined to the private realm. To the contrary, their professional lives were as much dictated and influenced by the romantic and mystic aspects of their lives. The following passage illustrates this point:
“Cubism has become less a tool of visual analysis than a Modernist mannerism in the legions influenced by Picasso, for whom it may have had a subjective urgency peculiarly his own. Why would someone, bent upon discovering a universal visual language, address and readdress the face form and figure of those to whom he was emotionally attached? It would be as if Bertrand Russell’s strategy for overcoming seeming contradictions by logical analysis were motivated by the personal dilemma of being greatly attached to two women at once”. (Hubbard, 2001)