Dimensions: image: 197 x 155 mm support: 236 x 184 mm frame: 416 x 338 x 33 mm
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This is Juan Gris's "Still Life with Guitar," painted sometime in the 1900s. I’m struck by the muted palette and how the fractured forms feel both representational and abstract at the same time. What’s your take on it? Curator: I see a deliberate disruption of bourgeois realism, a commentary on representation itself. Gris dismantles the traditional still life, challenging the viewer to reconstruct meaning. The guitar, the fruit – are these symbols of leisure, pleasure, or something more subversive considering the political climate of the time? Editor: Subversive how? Curator: Well, consider the rise of avant-garde movements questioning established norms. Gris, like other Cubists, used fragmentation to mirror a world in flux, reflecting the anxieties and uncertainties of a rapidly changing society. It's not just a guitar; it's a shattered icon. Editor: That makes me rethink the whole composition. It's not just a still life, it's a statement! Curator: Exactly! Art became a tool, a voice amidst societal upheaval. Thinking about art this way really opens up new layers of interpretation.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gris-still-life-with-guitar-t06815
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In a 1924 lecture Gris described painting as ‘a sort of flat, coloured architecture’, a conception reflected in the structure of these three small gouaches made that year. Visual reflections and rhymes are abundant in all three works. The bulbous body of the carafe in Bowl of Fruit echoes both the apple in the centre and the circular rim of the glass on the right, while the geometrical edges of the fruit bowl itself seem to reverberate across the folds of the tablecloth. In Pipe and Domino the spots of the domino, the bowl of the pipe and the rim of the small dish constitute an expanding series of circles. In Still Life with Guitar, the echoing ovals of the mouth of the carafe and the opening of the guitar offset the linear patterns of the sheet music and guitar strings. In addition, a deliberate spatial contradiction allows the fruit to nestle in the curve of the guitar as if in a fruit bowl, creating a sensory link between vision, taste and sound. Gallery label, September 2004
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