The Glass of Beer
Juan Gris Spanish
Not on view
Gris evoked a masculine world like that of Van de Velde’s nearby still life. The snippet from Le Journal offers minimal reading matter, but the eye-catching word “FEMMES” may suggest that the unseen beer drinker had sex on his mind. Ironically, it came from an impassioned “Appel aux Femmes” (Call to Women) to join the embattled French suffrage movement. Gris left the attitude of the beer drinker to the divisive “woman question” provocatively open, just as trompe l’oeil painters left it to their viewers to make what sense they liked of the documents littering their compositions.