Gris, Juan
The Bottle of Banyuls
-
(no idea which image is the right one)
1914 (180 Kb);
Pasted papers, oil, charcoal, and gouache, and pencil on canvas;
Kunstmuseum Bern
In The Bottle of Banyuls, Gris established an opposition a la
Picasso
in the construction of the bottle by juxtaposing partly overlapping,
contradictory formal elements: an opaque, straight-edged shape lies
beneath and slightly to the left of a transparent, curvilinear
shape. Gris enhanced this difference by giving the straight-edged,
speckled bottle a flipped-up, round top, in contrast to its striped
alternate, which displays a flat top. Yet this opposition, which
negates the possibility of a transparent or unambiguous relation
between the pictorial signifier and its referent, is in turn
undermined by Gris's use of materials. For Gris,
characteristically, has used the transparency of a certain kind of
paper to signify the transparency of glass. There is, therefore, in
this and many other Gris collages, an ambiguity in the way pictorial
forms and materials are understood to signify; at times they seem to
operate according to arbitrary formal oppositions (which deny the
possibility of a substantive relation between signifier and referent),
while at other times they seem to be motivated by the inherent
properties of material substances.
-- Christine Poggi, In Defiance of Painting
© 14 Jul 2002,
Nicolas Pioch -
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The Bottle of Banyuls
(no idea which image is the right one)