They Came to Houston - Part 2
Who woulda thunk it!?
This post is Part 2 (Part 1 in here) in a series that is a tip of the hat to the fabulous exhibition TAMARA DE LEMPICKA, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through May 26, 2025. Few may previously have known that Lempicka, painter of iconic works that embody chic Art Deco image creation and celebrity as no other, lived for a number of years in HOUSTON! And she was only one of many art icons of international importance who graced us with their presence over the decades. Here are just a few who, unlikely as it may seem, CAME TO HOUSTON. Who woulda thunk it!?
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, 1935.
Gertrude Stein, accompanied by her “secretary” Alice B. Toklas (really her life partner), arrived in Houston on March 23, 1935. Their stop here was part of Stein’s own American lecture tour, following up on her recent elevation into the ranks of the famous after the publication of a bestselling book – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – and the production of the avant-garde opera on which she collaborated with composer Virgil Thomson – Four Saints in Three Acts (which actually had a dozen saints and four acts!).
By 8:30 that evening, “Garrulous Gertie,” as one report in the newspaper dubbed her, was at the Junior League, delivering her lecture on “How Writing Is Written,” before an audience of 300. It seems that not everyone (anyone?) in the crowd found her compelling. In fact, some apparently thought her “nuts.” Not so, according to Houston Chronicle arts reporter Ina Gillespie Grotte. As proof, Grotte observed that, “Any woman who can get a crowd of 300 out to hear her expound these theories at $1 a head and can turn around and sell thousands of people books along the same line, is more than sane, say I! But how about those of us who buy the books and pay the dollar? You answer that one.”
What Miss Stein thought of Houston is not recorded. Miss Toklas thought that, “The gardens are very pretty in Houston.” You can read more about their visit HERE.
Marcel Duchamp, 1957.
Marcel Duchamp came to Houston in April 1957 in conjunction with the convention of the American Federation of the Arts, held in the city that year. This may have been his only visit to Houston, though as a by-then world-famous artist, he was already well known by art-interested Houstonians, and had been for decades, in part because of the avant-garde art-world connections of our own Emma Richardson Cherry, the only Texas member of the Société Anonyme, Inc., which Duchamp had co-founded in New York in 1920.
In June,1934, Cherry even made a Nude Descending a Staircase costume for a party at her home, in a nod to Duchamp’s famous painting. No photo of her costume seems to exist, but it might have looked something like this:
What Duchamp thought of Houston, if anything, is not recorded, but the influential lecture he gave here, titled “The Creative Act,” is. You can listen to Duchamp reading it HERE.
Tamara de Lempicka, 1963-1974.
Perhaps one of the most improbable of famous visitors to Houston was the painter of iconic Art Deco images, Tamara de Lempicka, shown here in her 1929 Autoportrait (Self-Portrait in a Green Bugatti) – improbable because she didn’t just stop here on the way to somewhere else, she lived here for 11 years, for a while at the Warwick Hotel (now the ZaZa).
It was the oil business rather than oil painting that prompted Lempicka’s move to Houston, to be near her daughter Kizette, whose geologist husband worked for Dow Chemical. The fit between the famous (some might think notorious) painter and Houston was not always easy – as when she badgered her son-in-law into painting purple stripes on his River Oaks house:
"Cars slowed down as they passed the site, suddenly so incongruous among the neighborhood's stately houses and classical architecture. Finally Tamara was satisfied, but when Kizette returned, she forced her mother to abort the project. The stripes, however, remained for weeks, and 3235 Reba Drive became a kind of local tourist attraction."
Eventually she moved on to Cuernavaca, Mexico. You can read more about Lempicka in Houston HERE and HERE.
TO BE CONTINUED …
Glad to see this Duchamp talk! I wasn’t familiar with that.
If only we could have been here to visit with them!