Lot Essay
This work was one of several still-lifes painted by Gris in 1915 which were then used to illustrate Pierre Reverdy's volume of poems, "Au Soleil du Plafond". Reverdy had been Gris' neighbour at 13, Place Ravignan in Montmartre before the War, he was then a young poet who would become one of Cubism's most pugnacious champions during the post-War period.
"In Reverdy's poems, there is a continuous conflation of objects, as flat entities or as richly evocative presences in dramatic interaction. The objects have an effect quite similar to what is found in the poetry of Mallarmé, whom, Kahnweiler reports, Gris worshipped. Mallarmé wanted 'to describe not the object itself but the effect it produces'. Poets of this form depended on the object, much as the Cubist painters did.
The implements of the arts are key motifs in Reverdy's poetry ... Among the titles of his poems are 'The Book', 'The Pipe', 'The Musician', 'The Guitar', 'The Violin', 'The Compote Dish' and 'Draught Board', all themes with some history in Gris' painting. Indeed, Reverdy's titles could be used as a catalogue of Gris' favourite objects. 'Signs' are everywhere, replacing words as signals and embodiments ... Reverdy was much concerned with surfaces and what lay behind them ... The watercolours accompanying the 1915 collaboration and the contemporaneous paintings concluded in a series dated early 1916 in which objects have a heightened, immanent presence and there is a lush, pointillist surface" (M. Rosenthal, Juan Gris, University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1983, p. 78).
In these works, Gris began to experiment with different surface textures, and thus eliminated three-dimensional elements in favour of an entirely planar composition. In Le Violon the composition is made up of a system of over-lapping planes verging close to abstraction, with only Reverdy-like emblems providing any clues of identity. Gris himself felt that 1915 was a crucial year in his development, in March he wrote: "Je crois que ... mes toiles commençent à avoir une unité dont avant elles manquaient. Ce ne sont plus ces inventaires d'objets qui tant me décourageaient autrefois" (Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris, Paris, 1977, p. XVIII).
"In Reverdy's poems, there is a continuous conflation of objects, as flat entities or as richly evocative presences in dramatic interaction. The objects have an effect quite similar to what is found in the poetry of Mallarmé, whom, Kahnweiler reports, Gris worshipped. Mallarmé wanted 'to describe not the object itself but the effect it produces'. Poets of this form depended on the object, much as the Cubist painters did.
The implements of the arts are key motifs in Reverdy's poetry ... Among the titles of his poems are 'The Book', 'The Pipe', 'The Musician', 'The Guitar', 'The Violin', 'The Compote Dish' and 'Draught Board', all themes with some history in Gris' painting. Indeed, Reverdy's titles could be used as a catalogue of Gris' favourite objects. 'Signs' are everywhere, replacing words as signals and embodiments ... Reverdy was much concerned with surfaces and what lay behind them ... The watercolours accompanying the 1915 collaboration and the contemporaneous paintings concluded in a series dated early 1916 in which objects have a heightened, immanent presence and there is a lush, pointillist surface" (M. Rosenthal, Juan Gris, University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1983, p. 78).
In these works, Gris began to experiment with different surface textures, and thus eliminated three-dimensional elements in favour of an entirely planar composition. In Le Violon the composition is made up of a system of over-lapping planes verging close to abstraction, with only Reverdy-like emblems providing any clues of identity. Gris himself felt that 1915 was a crucial year in his development, in March he wrote: "Je crois que ... mes toiles commençent à avoir une unité dont avant elles manquaient. Ce ne sont plus ces inventaires d'objets qui tant me décourageaient autrefois" (Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris, Paris, 1977, p. XVIII).