Un verre sur une table (A Glass on a Table)

This small still life, painted in Paris or Céret, is one of several paintings around this time that relate to the convivial life of the French café, where artists and writers gathered to socialize and exchange ideas. It represents a view into the establishment, or perhaps a tabletop seen from above. A white compote partially obscures a glass, possibly capped with a foamy head of beer. The two vessels perform a pas de deux of contrasting forms, textures, and colors, as the graceful compote seems to curtsy before the ramrod-straight glass.

In tandem with Georges Braque, Picasso created a visual language in 1907–08 that was later known as cubism; it challenged traditional modes of depicting space, volume, and mass. A Glass on a Table features attributes of Picasso’s early cubist style, characterized by multiple viewpoints and a somber palette of black, white, browns, and grays, as well as his later, more colorful and legible cubist style, which often makes use of stenciled letter, collage, and papier collé. These elements can easily play more than one role in a single composition, multiplying the ways a picture may be interpreted.