A Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Genderqueer Narrative and Photography in Gertrude Stein’s Interwar Texts

Abstract

This article argues that Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) is a genderqueer narrative of alternating identities related to artist Marcel Duchamp’s appearance as his female alter ego Rrose Sélavy (Man Ray 1920–1921; Man Ray 1921b). Art historians assume that Stein’s textual word play and outsized personality influenced Duchamp. Few scholars, however, have addressed the possible influence of Duchamp on Stein’s work. The similar ways in which Duchamp and Stein play with gender privileges gender ambiguity above gender identity. Seeing Stein’s work in relation to Duchamp’s genderqueer performance enables Stein to be recognized as an innovator of genderqueer aesthetics, which also leads to a recognition of Stein’s alternative approach to fine art: as this article will discuss, Stein’s interwar essay ‘Pictures’ (1935) reveals an undoing of such distinctions as copy and original that anticipates the achievements of the avant-garde and the Pop art movement of the late twentieth century. Stein’s gender play was integral to her development as a writer, popular author, and artists’ muse.

Keywords:

• genderqueer
• transgender
• photography
• avant-garde
• aesthetics
• Duchamp

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When asked what his moral position was, Duchamp responds “I had no position. I’ve been a little like Gertrude Stein” (Cabanne 1987: 17).

2 Marjorie Perloff (2012) discusses the possible influence of Duchamp’s Readymades, but only touches on how Duchamp’s gender play might have altered Stein’s writing and publication history.

3 See Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (Snorton 2017).

4 While Stimpson was writing prior to contemporary and arguably more equitable approaches to queer identity, her impact on more recent readings of Stein are substantial. See for example Chris Coffman’s introduction (Coffman 2018: 1–38).

5 Whereas white femininity appears as contrived, made-up and artificial in these images, for women of color like Josephine Baker “nakedness [was worn] like a sheath” as markers of femininity. See Anne Anlin Cheng (2011: 1–15 and 23–48).

6 This is also a joke that Stephen Dedalus makes in James Joyce’s the Portrait of the Artist as Young Man (Joyce 1987: 119)

7 While the description on the website that accompanied the 2011–2012 exhibit Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories claims that this image is “a [public] expression of her lesbian sexuality” (Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories 2011–2012), Laura Doan argues that such readings of photographic sexuality are historically inaccurate (Doan 2001: XXI).

8 Man Ray was also Jewish.