Free Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein Page B

his mother was the daughter of a French scientist and one of the inventors of photography. So Picabia was brought up on photography not on taking photographs but on the science of photography and he when he was a boy and his grandfather used to go on trips and visit museums and his grandfather photographed and Picabia was not interested as no one is if another one does it. But and so he thinks that is the reason he was not influenced by Cezanne. Then his grandfather died and it had been a household of men his grandfather and his father and his uncle and when his grandfather was dead or even before the household of men bored him and he ran away and with a little girl he loved then he ran away to Switzerland. He was seventeen years old then and to support them he painted picture postal cards in Switzerland and they got along.
    After that he went back to Paris and other places and painted and he knew Pissaro and his children and perhaps Pissaro influenced him. But he was worried so he said about painting not being painting he did not think about photography but he did think about painting not being painting. Just then he met Gabrielle who was studying music and she suggested to him that since painting should not be painting perhaps it should be music. He agreed that perhaps it should. And it was that for quite some time for him perhaps for too long a time. Anyway he was certain that anything should not look like anything even if it did and that really it did not. That was the influence of photography upon him it certainly was.
    That is where photography is different from painting, painting looks like something and photography does not.
    And Cezanne and Picasso have nothing to do with photography but Picabia has. Well.
    The only reason why people work or run around, and naturally everybody does all of one or the other of them is that they will not know that time is something and that time can pass. That is the only reason for working or for running around.
    And this too has to do with photography and modern painting.
    I begin to see what Picabia means about Cezanne. Not that I do not like Cezanne best but I begin to see what he means.
    This winter they had a Seurat show and that was interesting. They talk about mechanics and science but the only thing about mechanics and science is that it works, anything moving around makes another thing move around and so there is satisfaction. But and it is very important, anything that is alive if it moves around can fail to make something else move around as well as make it move around and so there is not complete satisfaction. Now what has art got to do with all this. Art is a little of both and until now it has gone on being something of both. It does make something move around by coming in contact with that thing but also it failsto do so that is it has failed to do so and so it has to do with something living.
    Now then came the domination of mechanical things and art which always has to see what the contemporary sees had to see in this way, that is to say had to see that a thing moving automatically made another thing move exactly in the way it did move and it could not fail as before insofar as it had been living it had had to fail.
    Well then what happened. It is still happening. Only now it is not any longer very interesting. Perhaps government which is neither mechanics nor life will begin and be something. Well anyway that is not for me to worry about. Not that I was ever worried or disturbed, how could I be when after all the question is after all does it do something and any something is or is not everything because it does look like it.
    I thought I understood all about what we had done and now understanding Picabia made me start all over again. And suddenly with the Seurat show it came. Besides then there is the question of photography in painting.
    Well anyway the Picabias stayed for several days and then they went away.
    That is the trouble with a distraction. A distraction is