"You can paint with whatever you like," French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote about Picasso in 1913, in response to his friend's impulse to include unorthodox materials in his artwork. This canvas shares many elements with contemporaneous works on paper, including its spare still life composition, fragments of the December 3, 1912 edition of Le Journal, sketchily drawn charcoal lines, and colorful accents. To this limited set of materials and techniques the artist added grit mixed with oil paint and hand-painted imitation marble, both applied in carefully defined patches that mimic the effects of collaged pieces of paper. Picasso's drawn lines duplicate his cut contours, which in turn echo the printed column lines within the pasted newspaper, demonstrating the rigor and sensitivity with which machine-made and handmade elements were set into dialogue in this radically simple canvas.
