Bowl and Pot

Cubism has a reputation for guitars, café tables and newspapers, so it is worth noticing how plain the props are here. A bowl and a pot, the kind of earthenware you would find in any kitchen, painted by Gris in 1912. He treats these ordinary vessels as pure structure, tipping them forward and slicing them into flat facets of grey and ochre, so you seem to see each one from above and from the side at the same time. There is almost no colour and no anecdote, just two round things on a surface. Gris was building his Cubism out of the simplest objects he could find, testing how far a bowl and a pot can be pulled apart and still read as a bowl and a pot. The pot's dark opening anchors the middle of the canvas, the one deep note in a field of pale planes.