It’s hard work being modern, and it must have been especially so for the Steins. Siblings Gertrude, Michael and Leo were middle-class Americans, heirs to a modest fortune, who moved to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century determined to find the future. They attended exhibitions, held salons, and amassed an astounding collection of early modern paintings by Matisse, Picasso and their contemporaries that’s on view now at the Met. Then, as a kind of coup de grace, the Steins commissioned what might be the most modern house ever, the Villa Garches by Le Corbusier.
Tucked deep inside the exhibit, in the corner of a small gallery, there’s a one-minute loop of vintage black and white film footage documenting the house. The clips (like everybody’s home movies, they’re tilted, jittery and out-of-focus) show kids running around in the yard and adults parading about in their finery rather than the house itself, which looks like a big, white spaceship that just landed behind them. The house still looks terrifically modern, a complex, idealized concoction of planes, ramps and ribbon windows. In the film footage the Steins, wearing heavy wools, hose and hats, look like Victorians lost in a future that’s not their own. Their foresight and fearlessness is remarkable.