Newspaper with Coffee Mill 1915

Here’s Juan Gris’s, shall we say, deconstructed breakfast, Newspaper with Coffee Mill. Gris, like Picasso and Braque, was dedicated to a Cubist language where objects are viewed from multiple angles at once and then reassembled on the canvas. Look at how the newspaper and coffee mill are built up using flat planes of color, a bit like collaging, but all done with paint. He’s not trying to fool us into thinking this is “real,” but instead presents a painted version of reality. See how the surface is built up with layers, but still remains relatively smooth? Gris’s mark-making is pretty controlled, each color block carefully placed. But in the top left there's an area of dark green, patterned like wallpaper, where you can see the individual dots and dabs of paint. It’s almost as if he’s saying: "Look, I’m making this up as I go along." Cubism was very influential for painters, it freed up a language to explore new ways of seeing the world. You can see traces of Cubism in the work of later artists such as David Hockney, in the way he breaks up and reassembles perspective in his paintings. Ultimately art's about the ongoing conversation.