Gertrude Stein by Picasso

Although we may not readily see this, Stein is a naturalist in an experimental mode, reconstituting the natural by way of experiments in form and discourse. Stein's objective is to recover primary processes of perception and thought and, as she reasons, "to express things seen not as one knows them but as they are when one sees them without remembering having looked at them" (Picasso).

--from Jack Kimball, "Gertrud Stein and the Natural World," 

http://www.fauxpress.com/kimball/res/stein.htm