In this episode, we’ll be visiting Bottle of Rum and Newspaper By Juan Gris at the Tate Modern London. Welcome to Art, Culture & Books with me, Anthony King.
Juan Gris was born in Spain in 1887 and was a Cubist. I really like this Oil on Canvas. The gallery tell us: “Like many cubist works, Gris’s painting provides a revised experience of the everyday, whether in the studio or in a familiar café. Glimpsed letters confirm the positions of the two objects: UM for rum, JOUR (of ‘journal’) for the newspaper. A table is indicated by the false wood-graining, a house-painter’s skill much admired by the cubists because it is identifiably as an illusion. Gris interweaves these fragmentary images of the familiar into a complex, carefully balanced structure”.
By Anthony King (c)