Paul Cézanne. Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants. 1890­94. Oil on canvas. 29 7/8 x 36 1/2". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960. ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art     Umberto Boccioni. Development of a Bottle in Space. 1912; cast 1931. Silvered bronze. 15 x 23 3/4 x 12 7/8". The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Aristide Maillol Fund

"The objects that go into my paintings are...common objects from anywhere: a pitcher, a mug of beer, a pipe, a package of tobacco, a bowl, a kitchen chair with a cane seat, a plain common table—the object at its most ordinary," Pablo Picasso, in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964, p. 74. In many ways, the development of the still life in the early years of this century reflected a visual dialogue with Cézanne. The distorted perspective, shifting relationship between objects and their surrounding space, and subtle, muted colors apparent in Cézanne’s Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants, 1890­94, broke down structural and spatial conventions and virtually blended figure and ground in a unified field. Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse found inspiration in both the selection and the organization of the objects in works like this one. Cézanne’s choices of prosaic fruits and vegetables, simple utensils, and stoneware pottery reflect a preference for humble domestic objects that remained a persistent characteristic of the modern still life throughout the century’s first decades.