A window blind, table, bottle, and newspaper occupy a bright interior. The outside world is suggested but filtered. Gris turns light itself into geometry. You feel a room where modern objects, printed words, and sunlight have been carefully folded together.
Oil and collage-like effects on canvas, using flat planes, pattern, and synthetic Cubist structure.
The blind mediates between interior and exterior, sight and obstruction. Newspaper fragments signal modern information culture.
Cubism was increasingly incorporating signs of urban life: cafés, papers, bottles, labels, and windows.
“I make a composition with a white and a black, and make adjustments when the white has become a paper and the black a shadow.”
The work contributed to modern painting’s interest in the picture surface as designed structure.
What did this stir in you?