Flowers 1914

Juan Gris made "Flowers," a collage, using paper and paint. It's not just the image, but the making of this artwork that's fascinating. Notice how Gris uses fragments of real-world ephemera – newsprint, wallpaper – alongside painted passages. Look closely and you can almost feel the texture of the paper, the slight relief where one piece overlaps another. This materiality is essential to the work's meaning. It draws attention to the status of the artwork as a constructed object, assembled from mundane materials. Instead of presenting an illusion, it acknowledges the labor and choices that go into its making. In his approach, Gris challenged the traditional hierarchy between the fine arts and the everyday world. He elevated craft processes by incorporating them into high art, revealing the artfulness inherent in the arrangement of the material world itself. By doing so, he blurred the lines between art, labor, and the act of consumption, inviting us to reconsider what we value and how we perceive the world around us.