The museum I chose to go to was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I found the artwork “Still Life with a Guitar” by Juan Gris in 1913. Juan Gris’s full name is Jose Victoriano Gonzalez-Perez born 1887 in Spain. He studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Manufactures in 1902, but decided to transition as a full-time artist in 1906 and moved to Paris. There he was mentored by Pablo Picasso where he learned Cubanism. He is most known for his still-life works using this technique.
Still Life with a Guitar is a deconstruction of a table with a guitar on it. There is a wooden table split diagonally into two, the top and underneath. The top right is a wooden top side intersected by various black shapes. Music sheets, grapes, and a glass lay on top of it of various bright colors. The underneath side on the bottom left is a yellow rectangular shape with two green cylinder table legs. In the center is a rectangular base and wooden guitar while the strings are blue. The background is a deep blue filled with various colorful shapes that segment the guitar and table and in turn give all elements sharp, rectangular, and angular shapes.
The Modernism artistic movement is defined by its, uses of abstract shapes and forms, vibrant and bold colors and the explorations of time, movement, and space. This artwork reflects some of these characteristics by using bold and bright colors, such as royal blue, light blue, yellow-green, and purple. He also uses wooden texture to differentiate the table and guitar from the rest of the elements. Another aspect of modernism it displays is its use of abstract layout and shapes that form into a picture. However, these use of shapes are mostly rectangular and are broken down into its distinct planes which is an aspect of cubanism.
I chose this artwork because when I first saw it I could not originally tell, what I was looking at. I could recognize some aspects of the painting, such as the glass and music sheets, but I had difficulty seeing the full picture. It took some time to see it. I admired how although Gris uses abstract shapes, it would take a considerable amount of consideration and time to place these shapes to form a recognizable image. I also liked its bold colors and the use of the realistic wooden texture on the table and guitar in an abstract painting. I haven’t seen texture in an abstract painting before.
Britney, This is a wonderful painting and a great example of Cubism. This is particularly evident in the way that painter hasn’t restricted himself to representing just the scene as viewed from a single perspective. Instead we are seeing the objects in this scene from a variety of different angles – showing us the underside of the table, for example! Love this!