| Artist: | Braque, Georges |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Clarinet | |
| Date of Work: | 1913 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | Pre-WWI | |
| Movement: | Synthetic Cubism | |
| Medium: | Collage | |
| Subject: throughout the period of Analytic Cubism, it was extremely difficult to tell Braque's work from Picasso's; at times they did not even sign their works. With Cubism they knew they were caught up in a project bigger than any one person's invention. Cubism is, after all, more than a style; it is a philosophy that addresses a changing conception of space and time and redefines truth as being relative to one's frame of reference. In 1911-12, when Analtyic Cubism shifts to Synthetic Cubism due to the development of collage, Braque's work starts to separate from Picasso's to a greater extent. In this still life with a clarinet, Braque introduces collage through the inclusion of the newspaper fragment that contains the word "echo." That word suggests a sound that is in keeping with the theme of music expressed by the clarinet. There is an elegance of design to Braque's collage that differs from Picasso's emphasis on wit and puns at this time. Braque's work almost conveys a classical serenity, while Picasso's collages often are more playful and willfully subversive, at times even crude (compare the heavy hemp rope Picasso hangs around "Still Life with Chair Caning," the very first collage, to the more balanced design Braque creates here). Style: Braque combines fragments of the "real"--the newspaper--with cubist, abstracted fragments; he includes carefully drawn elements with broad blocks of black cut paper. The image ends up a synthesis of diverging styles, providing another good example of how Synthetic Cubism builds up a new pictorial reality that is pluralistic rather than privileging any one style, representational or abstract. Context: "collage" is the turning point between Analytic and Synthetic Cubism (1911-12) in which subject matter is re-introduced through actual fragments of the "real." Color is also re-introduced in the process, and individual differences between Picasso and Braque start to show up in ways they did not during the Analytic Cubist period. If Analytical Cubism is basically "de-constructive," then Synthetic Cubism is "re-constructive." | ||
