Lecture 46: Cubism and Early Modern Painting
to be different moments, or “periods,” of his work, but they are coherent,
even inevitable.Next, we see Picasso’s Still Life with Chair-Caning (1912). This was
Picasso’s ¿ rst collage, made by gluing a piece of oilcloth printed with a
caning pattern onto the painted surface, then partly painting over it with
bold brushstrokes. The painted goblet and sliced lemon are fragmented; part
of the word Journal is painted boldly; a painted pipe stem (over the u in
Journal) seems to stick out of the picture. The pipe stem and the oilcloth
force us to ask, “What is painted; what is real?” We become part of a debate
between aesthetics and metaphysics. This collage also represents the ¿ rst
time Picasso introduced an illusionistic element—trompe l’oeil—into his art.
Finally, the work is framed with a piece of rope. This is the ¿ rst collage of
the 20th century, and Picasso knew that it was a seminal work; for this reason,
he kept it in his private collection.We now turn to Georges Braque, looking at his Table with Pipe (1914). As
mentioned earlier, Braque and Picasso had developed Cubism simultaneously
and with full awareness of each other’s work. This Braque is later, but all the
innovative ideas of Cubism are strongly asserted here, although composed
with a greater sense of ease. Each object is shown with multiple points of
view but more directly. The die, for instance, is unfolded to show two sides;
essentially it is À attened onto the picture plane. At the same time, there
is a de¿ nite sense of recession. In this painting, as in Picasso’s portrait of
Vollard, we are struck by the extreme subtlety of modeling—real modeling
in the traditional sense of a gradation from light to shadow—as well as by
the alternating opacity and transparency of the planes. The pictorial structure
is secure and convincing. Technically, some of the shapes are built up of
sand and some of gesso, and the painting is covered with Pointillist dots of
blue paint. The result is a varied and rich surface. Throughout his career,
Braque often used sand and other materials in his paintings.At the same time, Matisse had been working through his own dialogue with
the art of Picasso, not in collaboration, but in response to the Picassos he saw
on exhibition or in private collections, including Gertrude Stein’s. We see
¿ rst Matisse’s Harmony in Red (The Tablecloth) (1908–1909).