Life — July 12, 1917 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This page presents "Cubist Poems After Gertrude Stein"—a satirical take on modernist literary experimentation. The three short poems parody the abstract, fragmented style of Gertrude Stein's experimental writing. The illustration titled "The Leading Man" depicts outdoorsmen or surveyors with dogs in a landscape, likely mocking how Cubist and modernist art prioritized abstract form over clear narrative or subject matter. The satire targets early 20th-century avant-garde literature and art movements. By pairing nonsensical poems (featuring words like "Wallop, wallop!" and "Flub dub, flubbery dubbery") with a conventionally realistic illustration, Life magazine ridicules the gap between modernists' claims of sophistication and what ordinary readers perceive as meaningless gibberish. The joke: if you strip away modernist pretension, you're left with nothing.