The many sides of Gertrude Stein

I get it: Philip Kennicott loathes Gertrude Stein [“Gertrude Stein knew the right and wrong people,” Arts, Oct. 23]. While he has his reasons, I wish he had at least described the exhibition ”Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories” before launching his diatribe. I viewed it at the National Portrait Gallery the day before I read his review, and I was disappointed by what he wrote.

The show seeks to tell us about Stein and her time in “5 stories”: Stein as the subject of portraiture; as art collector; in her domestic life; through friendships; and as defined by her legacy as writer, celebrity, mentor. I left the exhibition wanting to know more about this interesting but human woman, whose many shortcomings are noted throughout. Kennicott instead creates a sixth story, the “sins” of Stein.

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One does not have to worship Stein, her work or her life to learn from the exhibition, and the review could have described more of the exhibition’s structure and the pieces instead of hammering on Stein, her work, her character, indeed her very being. Must he hit us over the head with the intensity of his disdain? Why does he not respect the readers enough to let them decide on the ultimate value of Gertrude Stein as cultural icon?

I encourage others to visit the National Portrait Gallery and judge the show for itself.

Kay Slaughter, Charlottesville

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Kudos to Philip Kennicott for the critical courage to say that the emperor is naked and, more important, to question justification for the Gertrude Stein exhibition, initiated, ironically, by Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. An artist has the right to be eccentric (if making anti-Semitic statements and collaborating with a pro-Nazi Vichy government can be put in this category), but sometimes it comes with ramifications for his or her legacy. Since the exhibition in question is about “Stein the person” and not “Stein the writer,” this legacy, when compromised, needs to be fully disclosed and should prevent us from putting such an artist on the national pedestal.

Sonia Melnikova-Raich, San Francisco

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Philip Kennicott appears to expect all writing, including Gertrude Stein’s, to aim at coherence by communication through the literal or ascribed meaning of words. Stein’s originality is to reject this assumption. She uses language for properties other than their meaning: their sound, their rhythm, their surprising contiguity. One may find this aim trivial or not worthwhile, as Kennicott plainly does, but one cannot judge her production apart from her evident intention.

As for Stein’s hunger for fame, toadying and association with Bernard Fay and other unsavory political characters — it’s all true, but it’s irrelevant. An artist must be judged only by his or her achievement. One might not want to count Ezra Pound as a friend — or to invite Caravaggio, Dante, Rimbaud or Dylan Thomas to one’s house. Yet the work of thousands of artists who led praiseworthy, decent, moral lives is excluded from one’s mental house, while the production of Stein and others lodges itself and cannot be ushered out.

Roger Lathbury, Alexandria