Still Life with Chair Caning
Pablo Picasso Spanish
Not on view
Picasso made the first Cubist collage by pasting a piece of oilcloth (a waterproof fabric used for tablecloths) onto an oval canvas depicting café fare and a newspaper. For this radical act—inserting a fragment of reality into the fictive realm of painting—he ingeniously selected a mass-produced, ready-made visual deception. Machine-printed to look like the textured rattan weave used in chairs, this piece of trumpery is materially real but patently fake. Picasso then surrounded his still life with rope, a handy substitute for the traditional hand-carved frames that mimic braiding. In so doing, he wittily imitated an imitation.
The Met acknowledges the exceptional generosity of the Musée National Picasso-Paris in lending this work; this is the first time in thirty years that it has been exhibited in the United States.
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