Bottle, Glass, Fork () is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). It was painted in the spring of 1912, at the height of the development of Analytic Cubism. Bottle, Glass, Fork is one of the best representations of the point in Picasso's career when his Cubist painting reached almost full abstraction. The analytic phase of Cubism was an original art movement developed by Picasso and his contemporary Georges Braque (1882–1963) and lasted from 1908-1912. Like Bottle, Glass, Fork, the paintings of this movement are characterized by the limited use of color, and a complex, elegant composition of small, fragmented, tightly interwoven planes within an all-over composition of broader planes. While the figures in Bottle, Glass, Fork can be difficult to discern, the objects do emerge after careful study of the painting. The painting is displayed in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Description
Bottle, Glass, Fork was painted with oils on canvas, in monochromatic shades of brown, grey, black, and white. The painting itself takes an oval shape, although it is now placed in a rectangular frame that measures 93 cm tall and 76 cm wide (37 inches tall and 30 inches wide). Bottle, Glass, Fork can be seen in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, with other notable paintings by Picasso, including Woman in a Cape (1901), La Vie (1903), and Harlequin with Violin (1918). Picasso's purpose in painting Bottle, Glass, Fork was to examine a still-life of everyday objects in terms of flat planes, thoroughly redefining their structural and spatial relationships. Picasso avoided the use of strong color in this analytical painting, instead relying on the contrasts of tonal shading in brown, gray, black and white to create forms and strengthen spatial interaction. There is no clear perspective in the painting, although a shallow sense of space can be discerned through the overlapping shapes and forms, which creates a step-by-step movement back into the picture plane. The viewer's eye is guided around the painting and into the center by the presence of curving black lines that mimic the oval shape of the canvas, although the composition remains chiefly architectural. Bottle, Glass, Fork presents a highly ordered structure that is meant to represent a still-life of objects arranged on a café table, although the forms are initially difficult to distinguish.
Interpretation
The title of the painting, Bottle, Glass, Fork, is the first indication that Picasso is portraying a still-life, perhaps set on a table at one of the cafés in Paris that Picasso and his contemporaries frequented. The bottle is the largest whole plane on the canvas, placed in the upper-left quadrant of the oval. Its cylindrical shape is indicated by the highlights and shading, making the bottle appear rounded in comparison with the other planes. The glass is harder to place, as there are several half-circle shapes that look as though they could represent goblets. However, an oval atop a shaded triangle, which sits next to another shaded triangle, which are both presented above a cylindrical glass stem, form a collection of shapes that are reminiscent of a martini glass in front of and to the left of the large bottle. The fork can be placed in the lower-right quadrant because of the short, curved black lines highlighted against a white parallelogram, indicating the prongs of the fork. Once the prongs are found, the viewer can make out the brown handle slightly below the prongs and separated from them by a small triangle.
With the title objects placed within the painting, other objects also begin to emerge from the geometric contours. At the very bottom and center of the painting there is a shape that resembles a key, perhaps to Picasso's art studio. The two small, swirling shapes diagonally to the right of the key might represent croissants to go along with the drinks in the bottle. Above the swirls there is a somewhat naturalistic depiction of a knife receding into space, indicating to the viewer that these objects actually do sit on a table that is both receding back and tilting up towards the surface of the painting.