A Lesson in Difference
Picasso recalled that from 1909 to 1911 "almost every evening, either I went to Braque's studio or he came to mine. Each of us HAD to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished until both of us felt it was." Braque's Still Life with Clarinet (Bottle and Clarinet) and Picasso's Pedestal Table, Glasses, Cups, Mandolin (both in this gallery) exemplify the similarities and differences between the two artists' work. The authorship of their paintings from this period is even more difficult to discern as they were signed on the back to avoid any visual distraction. Working with still lifes that they had arranged in their studios, Braque and Picasso shattered the profiles of objects in order to reveal their salient characteristics from varied points of view within a flattened pictorial space.
Close looking reveals aspects that distinguish their respective styles. Braque used longer, unbroken lines and prominent diagonals to anchor his composition, and he distributed the weight and dimensions of the Cubist facets evenly across the surface. In contrast, Picasso's forms are more compact and tend to accumulate toward the center of the image. Whereas Braque applied his paint with a semitransparent, gossamer consistency that creates a subtle luminosity, Picasso's brushstrokes are more opaque, revealing his flair for a dramatic use of black and pronounced shadows.
Braque's Musical Instruments
Every picture displayed in this room includes a representation of at least one instrument or musical reference: a guitar, mandolin, mandora, tenora, violin, metronome, or sheet music. Braque trained in music at school, studied flute in Le Havre with the painter Raoul Dufy's younger brother, and later learned to play the concertina, an instrument similar to an accordion. He enjoyed classical repertoire as much as popular tunes from the dance halls. Photographs of his studio reveal a variety of instruments, many of which he used as props in his still lifes. Braque later explained that "during this [Cubist] period I painted a lot of musical instruments, first of all because I was surrounded by them, and also because their forms, their volume, came into the ken of the still life as I understood it."
