Pablo Picasso

Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc

spring 1914

After fragmenting representational form almost to the point of extinction in 1911, the following year Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque reintroduced more legible imagery, usually derived from the environment of studio or café. Without abandoning all devices of Analytic Cubism , they developed a new idiom, referred to as Synthetic Cubism, in which they built their compositions with broader, flatter, and chromatically more varied planes. In the summer of 1912 Braque produced the first papier collé. In the present example Picasso’s pasted papers include printed material. These elements mimic their functions in the external world and therefore introduce a new level of reality into the picture. The printed papers appear to be integrated into the pictorial space rather than lying flat on the surface. A transparent plane outlined in chalk appears to penetrate the newspaper and the guitar seems to cast a shadow on it; the actual physical presence of the wallpaper is similarly contradicted by the addition of drawing. The treatment of other collaged papers multiplies meaning. Not only does each object have a multiple nature, but its relations in space to other objects are changeable and contradictory.

On view

Artist Pablo Picasso
Original Title Pipe, verre, bouteille de Vieux Marc
Date spring 1914
Medium Paper collage, charcoal, india ink, printer’s ink, graphite, and gouache on canvas
Dimensions 73.2 x 59.4 cm
Credit line Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
Accession 76.2553 PG 2
Collection Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Type Painting

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On view


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