Glass and Die
Pablo Picasso Spanish
Not on view
While Picasso never sculpted in the esteemed material of marble, he copied its veining in paintings, papiers collés, and this deliberately rough-hewn construction. The carved and marbleized piece of wood fixed to the backboard may represent a curtain or a screen. In any case, it complements the flat, marbleized shadow apparently cast by the white fluted wineglass. Decorative pattern thus supersedes realism in this exercise in trompe l’esprit (fool the mind). A jutting nail—a motif represented in countless trompe l’oeil paintings—is the sole surviving sign of a fringe cut from newspaper that originally adorned the edge of the circular table and concealed the construction’s unpainted base.
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