The Basket 1920

Juan Gris made this painting of a basket, with a newspaper, fruit and pipe in 1924, using oils. I can imagine Gris carefully arranging the objects on his table, and then trying to fix that arrangement in time. But of course, he doesn’t just copy reality. He’s playing with it, rearranging it in his own way. See how the objects seem both solid and fragmented, like a memory half-remembered? There’s this push-pull, a constant shifting between what we know and what we see. I wonder if he was thinking about Cezanne, who messed around with perspective and flattened space? Gris certainly knew the game. The colors are so muted, browns and grays, but then you catch this glimpse of light in the white cloth, and it’s like a little surprise. It shows how the simplest of gestures, a stroke of color, can bring a whole composition to life. Painters are always chatting with each other, across time, and they leave us clues in the paint!