Still Life: The Table
Juan Gris Spanish
Not on view
Like Chalfant in Which Is Which?, Gris used a newspaper clipping (in this case, an actual one) to engage the viewer in discerning “[L]E VR[AI] ET LE FAUX” (The true and the false), as the headline reads. Multiple layers of fiction ensue, as Gris draws phantasmal representations of a pipe, a glass, and bottles over solid wood-grain wallpaper that masquerades as a tabletop. A book lies open to a verifiable page, but the hefty volume is pure illusion. The artist pilfered the text from L’agent secret (The Secret Agent, 1911), one of a series of best-selling whodunits by French authors Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre that feature the criminal Fantômas, a master of disguises. The beguiling key cannot unlock the drawer because the “keyhole” is merely its own cast shadow.
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