Zeitgeist Resurrected

Comments (0) By Larissa Archer Wednesday, Jul 6 2011

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Historic queer icon, art world catalyst, and Bay Area native Gertrude Stein is enjoying posthumous adulation for her role in modern art history. SFMOMA’s current exhibit showcases her (and her family’s) game-changing art collection in “The Steins Collect,” and the Contemporary Jewish Museum shows art and archival materials by and about the woman herself in “Gertrude Stein: Five Stories.” Litquake furthers the flattery through the aspect of the avant-garde thinker’s life that most appeals to any San Franciscan’s aesthete/hedonist mix: the salon. Writer and performer (and SF Weekly contributor) Tara Jepsen channels Stein to host Cabaret Bastille, a night celebrating Left Bank Bohemia with literary readings, fancy cocktails, “blue films” (classy vintage porn), exotic dancing, and live music. Contemporary writers read excerpts from the heavyweights: Tweeter and novelist Matt Stewart as Ford Madox Ford, Alan Black as James Joyce, Literary Death Match producer Alia Volz as Anaïs Nin, among others. There’s also make-your-own-Matisse as well as Exquisite Corpse, which is not goth snuff performance art, but rather a highbrow word game based on a highbrow art game (so don’t get lost in the Joyce reading). Flapper and dandy attire is requested.
Thu., July 14, 8 p.m., 2011