The Table in Front of the Picture 1926

Juan Gris made this painting, oil on canvas, called 'The Table in Front of the Picture' sometime in the 1920s. Look at the way he layers objects and planes, creating a world within a world. It’s a still life, but it's also a painting *of* a painting. The texture is smooth, the colors muted, almost like a memory. The red is so brown it could be the memory of red. I love the knife cutting across the composition, a hard, cool, silvery presence. It’s echoed by the hard edge of the book beneath, an area Gris has really worked, modulating between darker and lighter whites and greys. It’s like he's teasing us, asking, "What is real? What is representation?" Gris’s work always makes me think of Picasso, his countryman, and Braque. But while they went big, Gris went deep, focusing on the intimate and the domestic. It shows how art is always a conversation, each artist responding to, and building upon, what came before.