Still life 5: Juan Gris ~ Water bottle, Bottle and Fruit Dish, 1915

In my last two pieces I ventured to dip a toe into the deep waters of theory that swirl around the near–incomprehensible subject of Analytical Cubism. I doubt I left anyone the wiser! And in truth the subject requires far more application than I am prepared to give it. I think that the law of diminishing returns would soon set in; and that the fruit of my labours in this particular vineyard of art history would only produce a wine far less palatable than the promise on its label. This has nothing to do with my attitude towards theory. Rather, it has to do with extravagant claims — mostly made by artists themselves — and a too often observable disjunction between what is said and what is actually produced. Here is a statement made by Juan Gris in L‘Esprit Nouveau in 1921:

I try to make concrete that which is abstract. I proceed from the general to the particular, by which I mean that I start with an abstraction in order to arrive at a true fact ... Cezanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but  I begin with a cylinder and create an individual of a special type: I make a bottle — a particular bottle — out of a cylinder.  

This is, I think, pretentious nonsense — especially when he claims ‘to start with an abstraction in order to arrive at a true fact.’ I doubt that there is any such thing as a ‘true fact’ in art. Art is artefact — in the best sense of that word — and reaches its meanings by indirection. Fortunately, Gris was a highly inventive painter, and his theories seem not to have ‘troubled’ the surface of his canvases. Moreover, start where a painter will, the result — from the very first mark made on the canvas — will be utterly different from the ideas which are always necessary as a starting point.

Water bottle, Bottle and Fruit Dish 1915

The still life, Water bottle, Bottle and Fruit Dish 1915, here illustrated is an example of what came to be called Synthetic Cubism — the origin of which was collage as practiced by Picasso and others. This involved the gluing of pieces of newspaper, wood veneer, cigarette packets, and other ephemera to the canvas — juxtaposed with painted areas. The result was ‘synthetic’ in that it involved the organisation of disparate materials to create a work of art without any reference to a motif (a part of the ‘real world’ immediately before the painter’s eyes). Recognisable objects were   still represented, but the obligation to place them in (Renaissance) perspective, and to show them as wholly realised, was exploded. Such paintings create their own atmosphere; and it is, I think, their invention which we find exciting — not spurious claims to be showing us ‘true facts’ (a sort of tautological chimera). There is no collage in Gris’ Water bottle, Bottle and Fruit Dish: such aspects of his composition as might have formed part of a collage — as the newspaper — have all been ‘recreated’ in oil paint.

Some notes on the composition

The first thing that might be noticed is the complete absence of horizontals and verticals. It is almost as if we were in a cabin on a rough sea, and yet no sense of ‘sea–sickness’ seems to be felt.

The bunch of grapes is perhaps the most perfunctorily indicated ‘part–object’. The bottom half of the wine glass aligns itself with the newspaper. The shadow of the wine glass — as of the tobacco pouch and the water bottle — is painted in an extraordinarily dark spotted green–black.

Conventional reflective notations are given to the bottle and the wine glass. There is a great deal of textural variation across the picture plane. The greens are all central; the blues and blacks more diffuse. There is a pinkish red–violet top left and bottom right.

The tobacco pouch, the wine glass, the pipe, and the newspaper are treated comparatively realistically. The pipe stem changes colour as it crosses the newspaper. The shadow to the right of the newspaper — and under the bottom corner of the table — gives just sufficient realism to play pictorial tricks with the overall flatness of the picture.