Guitar on the Table 1913

Juan Gris’s “Guitar on the Table” is an oil on canvas painting where blues and browns are dominant. You can imagine Gris shifting and emerging through trial and error to paint this scene. I sympathize with Gris, imagining what it must have been like to create this painting. He might have been thinking about how to create a coherent image, even though the guitar and table were represented by so many planes. The paint isn't especially thick here, and the surface is smooth, but that allows the colors to really sing. The blue is cool and receding, while the browns of the guitar come forward. It’s a constant play of perspective. The lines of the guitar strings don't quite line up. They're slightly skewed, suggesting movement, vibration, and sound. And it reminds me that artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring each other's creativity, like musicians playing off one another. Painting is an embodied expression which embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings.