Art 101 Blog Post Week 5 – Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning

This video explained Picasso’s cubism period when he created his painting named, “Still Life with Chair Caning”, painted oil on canvas in 1912. The critics in the video explained that they believe the painting itself does not actually look like a painting, they think it looks like a disaster. The colors he used are grey and brown and are not vibrant so it does not draw the audience to look at the painting for long. The interesting thing about this painting is that it is not entirely made of paint. Only the top right side of the canvas are paint and the other is made of cheap oil cloth. This somewhat suggests to the critics that Picasso was making trash into art. This piece does not become interesting and significant until people know the exact meaning behind the piece. This almost looks like a breakfast table and the cheap oil cloth is a printed pattern looks as if it was purchased from a hardware store. Picasso glued the pattern onto the painting and painted over it. This makes the critics wonder if he is cheating on his artwork by buying reproduced material and using it in his painting. The “Jou” letters that appear on the left side of the painting mean “game” or “play” in french. The first 3 letters in the French word are for “newspaper”. This makes it seem like the painting is almost like an elliptical table. There is rope surrounding the painting. You can see almost all angles of each image of the pieces of the painting, such as the image of a knife, pipe, lemon and a glass. This is a very strange painting that almost seems irrelevant to look at but it was meaningful for the artist to create it.