Dimensions: support: 180 x 223 mm frame: 340 x 390 x 31 mm
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: This intimate gouache painting is titled "Pipe and Domino" by Juan Gris, created sometime around 1924. It’s currently held in the Tate Collections. Editor: My first impression is how quiet and still it feels. There's a subdued palette, almost melancholic, despite the playful subject matter. Curator: The composition feels carefully constructed, doesn't it? Gris uses overlapping planes and subtle shifts in perspective to create a sense of depth and tension within a small space. Editor: Absolutely. And I think that is what makes it successful. The domino, pipe, and bowl are all rendered with a kind of detached precision. He's not just painting objects, but ideas of objects. Curator: Yes! There's something so grounding about the ordinary, mundane objects he chooses and how he elevates them to something… almost monumental. It's an invitation to see the world with fresh eyes. Editor: Precisely. It's a thoughtful and evocative piece that makes you wonder what Gris was thinking, or perhaps feeling, when he set out to create it.
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In a 1924 lecture Gris described painting as ‘a sort of flat, coloured architecture’, a conception reflected in the structure of these three small gouaches made that year. Visual reflections and rhymes are abundant in all three works. The bulbous body of the carafe in Bowl of Fruit echoes both the apple in the centre and the circular rim of the glass on the right, while the geometrical edges of the fruit bowl itself seem to reverberate across the folds of the tablecloth. In Pipe and Domino the spots of the domino, the bowl of the pipe and the rim of the small dish constitute an expanding series of circles. In Still Life with Guitar, the echoing ovals of the mouth of the carafe and the opening of the guitar offset the linear patterns of the sheet music and guitar strings. In addition, a deliberate spatial contradiction allows the fruit to nestle in the curve of the guitar as if in a fruit bowl, creating a sensory link between vision, taste and sound. Gallery label, September 2004
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