Georges Braque / Candlestick and Playing Cards / Winter 1909-10Georges Braque
Candlestick and Playing Cards
Winter 1909-10

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Creator Name: Braque, Georges
Creator Nationality: European; French
Creator Role: Artist
Creator Dates/Places: French, 1882-1963
Creator Name-CRT: Georges Braque
Title: Candlestick and Playing Cards
View: Full View
Creation Start Date: 1909
Creation End Date: 1910
Creation Date: Winter 1909-10
Object Type: Paintings
Materials and Techniques: oil on canvas
Dimensions: oval: 25-5/8 x 21-3/8 in. (65.1 x 54.3 cm)
AMICA Contributor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Owner Location: New York, New York, USA
ID Number: 1997.149.12
Credit Line: The Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls Collection, 1997
Copyright: ? Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Rights: http://www.arsny.com
Context:

Following in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather, who had been house painters, Braque left Le Havre for Paris in 1900 to be apprenticed to a painter/decorator. The technical knowledge he acquired would serve him throughout his career. In his painting, he abandoned a conventional, realist mode to briefly embrace Fauvism. Shortly afterward he discovered the work of Paul Cézanne, which he studied thoroughly and greatly admired. In autumn 1907 Braque met Picasso and was astounded by his large canvas "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." By the end of summer 1908, which he spent at L'Estaque, Braque was painting starkly abstracted landscapes that revealed the influence of Cézanne. These works, simplified into the geometric forms whose planes are linked to one another, might be called the first Cubist paintings. They, in turn, influenced Picasso. By winter 1908-09 Braque and Picasso were inseparable, and their joint invention of Cubism is legendary (1909-14). Braque is credited as the first to incorporate collage elements into Cubist pictures (ca. 1911-12).

During the most abstract phase of Cubism - also referred to as "High" Analytic Cubism (1910-12) - Picasso and Braque continually broke down forms in their works. Consequently, their compositions consisted mainly of large abstract planes and small faceted ones, along with arcs, angles, and lines. The sober palette of grays, browns, and blacks - some opaque, some not - enabled the planes to overlap and merge with one another in a shallow relieflike space, as they do in this masterful small "High" Analytic still life.

Some tenuous links with reality survive when images of naturalistic objects, or parts of them, are incorporated into the composition. Here, the thick slab of wood of the table's corner juts in a wide angle into the lower center of the image. Farther back appears the saucerlike base of the brass candlestick. To the right of the candlestick float the two playing cards of the title: the ace of hearts and the six of diamonds.

In Cubist compositions, forms usually concentrate in the center, leaving the corners of such works rather empty. To avoid this, Picasso and Braque often favored oval canvases, as here, in one of Braque's first uses of the format.


AMICA ID: MMA_.1997.149.12
AMICA Library Year: 2000
Media Metadata Rights: Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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