Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris, edited by Nicole R. Myers and Katherine Rothkopf

The beautiful book his work deserves

The modernist painting style of cubism is generally considered to have been invented jointly by painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1907. Most art aficionados, if questioned for a third artist in that movement, would call up the name of Juan Gris. In fact, though Gris followed in the footsteps of Picasso and Braque, some (myself included) consider Gris to have been the one who really took cubism to its creative apex. Gris pushed the stylistic experiments in form, structure, and color farther than his better-known contemporaries, and in the process managed to produce many beautiful paintings. Even those who can’t stand cubism (and that’s probably the majority of the world’s population) might very well enjoy looking at a Juan Gris painting.

The still life, usually an arrangement of objects on a table, was a common subject matter for cubist artists and a particular specialty of Gris’s. Now his work in that area gets its deserved recognition with the beautifully produced coffee table book Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris, edited by Nicole R. Myers of the Dallas Museum of Art and Katherine Rothkopf of the Baltimore Museum of Art. This book was published in 2021 by Yale University Press to coincide with an exhibition of Gris’s still lifes organized by those two museums.

This book is not intended to be a comprehensive biography or retrospective on Juan Gris. That has already been done at least twice, by Antonio Gaya Nuño in 1986 and by Christopher Green in 1992. This book is meant to focus solely on Gris’s still lifes, but it nevertheless does contain a biological overview and a fair share of scholarly content on Gris’s work. The assortment of essays included, however, is a bit random. Myers delivers a truly excellent essay examining how Gris went about planning and executing his still life paintings. For anyone who paints or draws, this chapter reads like a behind-the-scenes exposé into Gris’s methods and materials. Another essay is a string of brief institutional histories of every Spanish museum that owns a work by Juan Gris. It’s hard to see how that’s useful; wouldn’t a list have sufficed? Another essay explores the influence of Gris on abstract artists in South America. The connection feels only tenuously established, but this chapter did bring to my attention some Latin American artists with whom I was previously unfamiliar.

While the essays are hit-and-miss, the images strike the bullseye time and time again. The text divides Gris’s tragically brief career into five distinct stages. All of those stages are well-represented by selected artworks, and one can clearly see Gris’s progression as an artist over time. The paintings are all beautifully reproduced, most of them appearing at full-page size. The photography of the artworks and the quality of the printing are impeccable. When it comes to art publications, Yale University Press always makes a quality product.

I still think Green and Gaya Nuño’s books are better overall volumes on Gris’s life and career, but Cubism in Color is a great addition to the literature on Gris’s art. I doubt any art lover would ever say, “I’m of fan of Gris, but I don’t like his still lifes.” Still lifes were so integral to his thought and vision as an artist. This book celebrates Gris’s innovative visual experimentation and sublime talent for composition. His still lifes deserve a great showcase in print, and that’s what they’re given here.

Flowers, 1914

The Violin, 1916

Still Life with a Bottle of Bordeaux, 1919

The Open Window, 1921

Juan Gris by Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño

A lovely showcase of the cubist master’s work

The Spanish painter Juan Gris did not invent the pictorial style of cubism, but he perfected it to its zenith. While Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque moved on to other modes of expression, Gris devoted his whole career to the visual language of cubism, creating some of the most ingenious, intricate, and aesthetically stimulating works in the cubist idiom.

The book simply entitled Juan Gris by Spanish art historian Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño was published in 1986 by a Spanish publisher, Ediciones Polígrafa, but they also published an English-language edition. The book opens with 25 pages of nothing but text, set so densely that it is painful to the eyes. Beyond that, however, the remaining hundred pages are filled with reproductions of Gris’s work. The text by Gaya Nuño presents an informative biography of the artist. It is unlikely that Gaya Nuño ever met Gris, who died young, but the historian did interview some of the artist’s contemporaries and friends in his research for this essay. Written from a Spanish perspective, the text contemplates and emphasizes Gris’s Spanishness and to what extent he expressed the national spirit of his homeland in his works. Gaya Nuño’s assessment of Gris’s relationship to Picasso is somewhat surprising. According to this account, Gris looked up to Picasso as a mentor and idol, but Picasso looked down on Gris and resented any critical acclaim the younger artist received.

While the text is educational, the main attraction here is the images. The book reproduces 166 of Gris’s artworks. About three-quarters of them are printed in color, and many occupy a full page. The photographs of the artworks would have been supplied by the individual museums that held them, so the quality of the photographs varies in terms of lighting and clarity of focus, but on the whole the images are reproduced beautifully. They are presented in chronological order, even starting with several examples of Gris’s day-job work as a graphic artist and illustrator. Some of his theatrical designs for stage sets and costumes appear towards the end of the book. Over the course of this retrospective, one can see Gris’s style develop from an analytical cubism based on the ideas of Picasso and Braque to a more idiosyncratic synthetic cubism later in his career. From the very beginning, however, Gris’s work exhibits a lyricism, experimentation, and playfulness that distinguishes him from his cubist contemporaries.

I know of two other fine illustrated books that have been published on Gris. Christopher Green’s book entitled Juan Gris was published in 1992 by Yale University Press. James Thrall Soby’s 1958 book, also entitled Juan Gris, was published by the Museum of Modern Art. You can find a digitized version of the latter book on the MOMA website. The Green book is much stronger on text, with lots of biographical content and analysis and criticism of Gris’s work. If you want a thorough scholarly overview of Gris’s career, Green’s is probably your book. Soby’s book is similar in size and number of photographs to Gaya Nuño’s, but, being printed in 1958, more of the pictures are in black and white. If you’re a fan of Gris’s work, you really can’t go wrong with any one of these three. Gaya Nuño’s book, however, may be the best illustrated of the three.

Violin and Guitar, 1913, oil on canvas, 100 x 65.5 cm

The Checkerboard, 1915, oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm

The Violin, 1916, oil on wood, 116.5 x 73 cm

Guitar, Bottle, and Glass, 1917, oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm

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Juan Gris by Christopher Green

Retrospective for a modern master
Though Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque may have founded the Cubist school of painting, and Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the manifesto for the movement, it was Juan Gris who truly mastered the Cubist aesthetic and pushed it as far as it could go, creating beautifully intricate paintings in which logic and lyricism compete to compose symphonies of spatial manipulation. A fitting monument to this master’s genius, the book simply entitled Juan Gris was published in 1992 by Yale University Press to accompany a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. This substantial 9” x 11” tome contains 118 plates of Gris paintings and drawings from all stages of his career. Almost all are reproduced at a full page in size, and all are in full color unless the original work was in black and white. Around another 75 smaller black and white images illustrate the book’s roughly 200 pages of essays.

While this book succeeds as a beautiful coffee-table showcase of Gris’s work, it also contains a complete and thoroughly detailed scholarly monograph on the artist and his art. The text by Christopher Green, who curated the exhibition, is written by an art historian for art historians, with little attempt made to make it accessible to a lay audience. (I have an art degree, and I found it tough going.) This is not a biography but a critical study, and Green expects his readers to come readily armed with extensive prior knowledge of Gris’s life and career. (He does include a four-page biography of Gris as an appendix. I would suggest you read that first.) Some topics Green covers include the chicken-and-egg balance between visual analysis of form and intellectual synthesis in Gris’s painting process, the role of Platonic philosophy in his art, and the personal meanings behind particular objects or figures he chose to depict in his paintings. Green analyzes numerous writings by contemporary critics and friends of Gris, often reconciling conflicting statements in order to elucidate insight into Gris’s life and art. The prose can be tedious and repetitive at times, as it is written in the case-building style of academic argument. Though the text delves into more theoretical hair-splitting than this general reader was looking for, I did learn a lot about Gris’s artistic process and pictorial techniques.

In addition to Green’s contributions, the book contains two additional essays. Karin von Maur writes about “Music and Theatre in the Art of Juan Gris,” including his set and costume designs for various ballet productions. Christian Derouet provides an essay discussing a recently discovered correspondence between Gris and one of his art dealers, Léonce Rosenberg. Both contributions help broaden the reader’s understanding of Gris, in particular von Maur’s essay, as it brings to light Gris’s work in a medium for which he is little known.

Even though it was published a quarter century ago, when taking into consideration both the value of its authoritative text and the exceptional reproduction quality of its images, Green’s book is still likely the best book available on Gris. Its prohibitive price may put it beyond the reach of many readers’ private collections, but any respectable university library with a decent art department should have a well-loved copy on their shelves. Any artist or art lover with an appreciation for Cubism should seek it out.

Fruit Dish and Carafe, 1914, oil, papier collé, and charcoal on canvas, 92 x 65 cm

Still Life with Checkered Tablecloth, 1915, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

Guitar and Fruit Dish, 1918, oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm

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