Still Life: Playing Cards, Coffee Cup and Apples 1917

Curator: This is Jean Metzinger’s “Still Life: Playing Cards, Coffee Cup and Apples,” painted in 1917. Look how the artist presents these ordinary objects through the lens of Cubism, using oil paint. Editor: It feels…contained, almost claustrophobic. The shapes vie for space, pushing against one another within the canvas. Not quite jarring, but certainly unsettling. Curator: Exactly! The composition departs from traditional perspective, employing geometric forms to deconstruct and then reconstruct the scene. Observe how the artist fractures the objects and splinters the space, all planes and angles coexisting on the picture plane. Editor: A rather disjointed expression of wartime ennui perhaps? Considering that 1917 was the height of the First World War, one cannot help but speculate whether Metzinger, although spared frontline service himself, expresses a broader sentiment about the disruption and disarray impacting everyday life at this period. The commonplace is refigured as almost militant! Curator: An interesting consideration! It would also be helpful to examine the function of light within the work. Light defines shape here and highlights surface qualities to indicate three dimensionality, giving life to the still life arrangement by emphasizing a strong use of shadow and contour. Editor: The table on which this Cubist display rests could be observed in other contexts, or social environments – at a time of elevated upheaval, might such ‘hobbies’ be restricted to upper-class patrons or a bourgeois social sector looking for escapism? Curator: What you're mentioning ties into the development of simultaneism, in which Metzinger presents multiple viewpoints at once. The visible brushstrokes and vibrant color choices further activate the surface, drawing attention to the materiality of the painting. It demands to be understood on its own formal terms, beyond mere representation. Editor: That much is certainly true! While this painting is interesting formally, it perhaps has further connotations within wider socio-political discourses about what the act of ‘playing’ even looks like at a time of elevated societal disruption and discord! Curator: Certainly food for thought. A potent example of the ongoing experimentation during the Cubist movement. Editor: I agree – its aesthetic language resonates long after the initial viewing.