Glass and bottle of straw rum 1914

Pablo Picasso made this still life of oil on canvas, Glass and bottle of straw rum. It's a fine example of synthetic cubism, a style he pioneered in France at a time of great political and social change. We can see that Picasso plays with the illusion of reality. He questions the authority of the canvas to depict real life, and uses everyday objects such as the bottle, glass, newspaper and playing card to ground the painting in contemporary society. Cubism broke with the established norms of the Academy, which held that art should imitate nature, and rather it offers up a novel perspective of what art could be. To better understand Picasso's innovations, you might look at the art criticism of the time, or the exhibition reviews, to see how his work was received by the public and by institutions. The image's meaning is contingent on the social and institutional context of its time.