Newspaper and Fruit Dish 1916

With oil on canvas, Juan Gris constructed his *Newspaper and Fruit Dish* as if building a house of cards. Each geometric plane is carefully placed, balancing precariously with the others. The colours are muted, tending towards a limited palette of blues, greys, yellows, and browns. I bet Gris was really methodical. I can imagine him squinting at the subject. Then he would translate that information onto the canvas, shifting and adjusting until the painting reached a point of… stillness? It’s so interesting how he’s taken the everyday – a newspaper, a fruit dish – and abstracted it to its bare essentials. Look at the way he renders texture through these repeated patterns. See the tiny dots and dashes? Each one is a little mark, a decision. It reminds me of the way Cézanne built up forms with individual brushstrokes. Artists are always riffing off each other, having this silent conversation across time. It’s a lineage, a language. The result is a constant pushing and pulling of ideas, of ways of seeing.