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Still Life with Checked Tablecloth by Juan Gris

Juan Gris · 1915-03-01

Juan Gris painted this Cubist puzzle in 1915, deep in wartime Paris, and gave it a straightforward title: Le compotier. The Metropolitan Museum of Art now holds Still Life with Checked Tablecloth, a work that rewards a very slow look. On the surface, it is a café table with a newspaper, a bottle of wine, a guitar, and a bowl of green grapes on a brilliant teal check.

Let your eye drift across the canvas. The grapes read clearly, the guitar fragments elegantly, but the real trick lives in the composite shape spanning the width of the cloth. Art historians have documented what Gris left for the attentive viewer: the grapes become eyes, the dark soundhole of the guitar forms a snout, and the curved wooden body suggests horns. A bull's head emerges from a still life.

Gris was born in Madrid and studied mechanical drawing before moving to Paris to join the circle of Picasso and Braque. He brought a rigorous, almost architectural discipline to Cubism, but his Spanish identity never left him. Hiding a bull inside a French café scene was a quiet, visual joke, and a signature of national pride. He died young, in 1927, but left behind paintings that keep a dozen secrets each.

How long did he wait for someone to spot the bull? The painting has been in New York for decades, and the bull is still there, waiting.

Details

But look at the grapes.
But look at the grapes.
Now, the dark circle beside them.
Now, the dark circle beside them.
And the curve of the guitar.
And the curve of the guitar.
The Spaniard never forgot home.
The Spaniard never forgot home.
The most virtuoso passage , Gris maps the check pattern across fragmented, tilted planes so it simultaneously reads as flat pattern and three-dimensional draped cloth; the title foregrounds this feat.
The most virtuoso passage , Gris maps the check pattern across fragmented, tilted planes so it simultaneously reads as flat pattern and three-dimensional draped cloth; the title foregrounds this feat.
Transcript

A table set with a newspaper, a guitar, and a bottle of wine. But look at the grapes. Now, the dark circle beside them. And the curve of the guitar. Scholars say Juan Gris hid a bull's head in plain sight. The Spaniard never forgot home.