Still Life with a Bottle, Playing Cards, and a Wineglass on a Table
Pablo Picasso Spanish
Not on view
In this painting, Picasso engaged with a traditional Spanish type of realist still life in which the objects are arranged in a zigzagging line along a narrow, projecting ledge. But subversion as well as homage was involved, for although he revived a time-honored form, he chose lowly tavern imagery and adapted artisanal techniques and materials. He used a decorator’s comb to grain the wood, gave the bottle literal tangibility by mixing sand into the dark gray paint, and imitated the vulgar trompe l’oeil of a printed wallpaper border when painting the carved molding of the table’s edge.
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