What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I

Nature Morte au Pot was painted four years prior to Braque’s passing in 1963. His late still life paintings are a departure from both his early Cubist compositions, and his still life paintings from decades later. From 1907-1914, the French master’s name was inextricably intertwined with Picasso’s; the latter jokingly referred to Braque as his “ex-wife.” The two were major contributors to and pioneers in Analytic Cubism, whose aim was to depict objects in a manner in which they are radically fractured and deconstructed into overlapping planes and facets, and are meant to be simultaneously viewed from different angles, with traditional notions of perspective and foreshortening abandoned. It was the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles who described his work as “bizarreries cubiques.”Braque’s still life paintings from the late 1920s to the 1940s are characterized by their decorative and sensual qualities, with an emphasis on color, pattern, ornament, and sometimes shrouded in ambiguous symbolism. Some of the still life works from this period also feature the vanitas element of a human skull. Notwithstanding technical, stylistic, and compositional changes in his still life paintings, it is worth noting that all the while, Braque maintained an adherence to the precepts of Cubism, while Picasso experimented with different movements, including a revival of classicism, also referred to as retour à l’ordre (return to order). Nature Morte au Pot is emblematic of Braque’s late period still life paintings. Said Braque: “Objects don’t exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence...that is true poetry.”Executed three years after the artist completed his monumental nine Ateliers paintings and at a time when he was in poor health, Nature Morte au Pot is not only less visually ‘readable’ than the artist’s still life compositions dating to roughly the second quarter of the 20th century, but is fundamentally far removed from the far more painstaking, calculated, multi-angular Analytic Cubist compositions he executed early in his career (along with Picasso and Juan Gris). The objects in the present painting appear ethereal and practically undulating, possessing an almost rhythmic quality, particularly the pot at left, which nearly vibrates uneasily along a slanted surface. It, along with the partially unfinished background, is executed in a highly expressive manner.