Henri Matisse.
The Blue Window. 1913.

Oil on canvas. 51 1/2 x 35 5/8".
The Museum of Modern Art,New York.
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund.
©1997 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/
Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York


 
Juan Gris.
Glass and Bottle. c. 1913.

Ink, gouache, watercolor, charcoal,
and pencil on gray paper.
18 1/4 x 12 1/4".
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Celeste and Armand P. Bartos
(fractional gift).
©1997 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

 
 
 
 
  "To copy the objects in a still life is nothing, one must render the emotion they awaken..." Henri Matisse, in Jack Flam. Matisse on Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. p. 45.

The structures of objects, and their relationships to each other and to their surrounding spaces, were of primary interest in the development of Analytic Cubism during the period 1910­14. Picasso and Braque in particular, but also Juan Gris, Henri Laurens, and Fernand Léger, found the still life an exemplary site for innovation and experimentation. Abandoning the familiar domesticity of the objects in Cézanne’s still lifes, they sought inspiration in the urban milieu. The ever-changing settings of the café table—cigars, pipes, newspapers, bottles of different sizes and shapes—were the chosen motifs in Cubist works of the period. The playful use of words and pasted paper to signify things introduces a more concrete reality: in Picasso’s Siphon, Glass, Newspaper, and Violin, 1912, for example, the cutout word "JOURNAL" represents a newspaper on a table, and in other works, marbled, faux-bois, or patterned paper represents tabletops or walls. Objects drawn or outlined over such collaged elements force a further shift in perception and provoke multiple viewpoints, dismantling and reconstructing reality.