When I attended the Newhouse School at Syracuse University we read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. I was intrigued that it was written by someone other than Alice. That was my first experience with think-different wiring. The book is a stunning lesson on coping with and reacting to controversy. Stein was a patron of the arts, notably of Picasso. But Picasso’s Paris was a conservative, parochial society that had a lot of rules about what art should be and how one should behave. Stein was a Lesbian. Picasso’s artwork was an apparent mess. Just a big mess.
Stein shares the story in the book of the very first display of Picasso’s paintings in a formal Parisian gallery. No one had seen his work. The time frame was the period at the end of the age of Impressionism which celebrated pretty water lilies and starry nights. Picasso’s art was bold, brash and not based on realism.