Florine Stettheimer had a charmed life, to judge from the expansive, colorful, and grand exhibition at the Jewish Museum. An artist born to wealth, she painted her milieu: “Spring Sale at Bendel’s,” “Asbury Park South,” parades, parties, picnics, groups together enjoying life, and portraits like the one of Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, or her sisters Ettie, a novelist, and Carrie. On some, she crafted the frames. She partied with a who’s who of art world luminaries, knowing everyone to be known in the New York art scene at the turn of the century, and often threw the soirees herself.

In juxtaposition with her paintings, poetry adorns the museum walls. “Our Parties,” for example, reads:

 Our parties

Our picnics

Our banquets

Our friends

Have at last a raison d’etre

Seen in color and design

It amuses me

To recreate them

To paint them.

One stellar moment of her career stands out: her work with Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson on Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera that premiered at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. As described, the limousines filled with New York’s tuxedoed social elite made their way to the extraordinary premiere that featured an all black cast, before the opera opened on Broadway. Stettheimer did the scenery and splendid costumes. Some black & white footage of the performance is screened in one of the galleries, and for me shows an extraordinary collaboration among these exceptional and off beat artists. Interviewed for a television documentary, one of the singers stated that she did not understand a word of Stein’s poetic, abstract libretto, but that did not matter; the words made sound sense. And to that whimsical fantasy, Stettheimer contributed a gossamer vision in ethereal whites.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura