.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Painted in 1942, Le compotier is an exceptional example of the still-life genre of which Georges Braque was such an unparalleled master. Braque regarded himself as the heir of Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Paul Cézanne, ennobling the most mundane of objects through a clear and implacably strict inner logic, the underpinnings of which were based on pictorial solutions he and Picasso had proposed during their cubist experiments. Disregarding the prevailing artistic tendencies toward Surrealism, Expressionism, and the return to realism, Braque set about applying exclusively the constructs of cubism, which was for him a limitless language, the fundamental rhetoric of which could never be exhausted. In decorative large scale still lifes such as the present work, Braque compressed proliferation of details within a flattened space to create densely woven ornamental patterns. The sumptuously Baroque richness of these paintings recalls the elaborate still-life compositions of the 17th century Dutch school. At the same time, Braque painted smaller and more classically austere works that depicted only a few humble objects, and show a clear debt to Francisco de Zurburán and other 17th century Spanish masters.
The present painting represents a middle ground between these two tendencies in Braque's work, and in its intimate warmth, measured simplicity and balance most closely reflects a native French tradition in still-life painting derived from Chardin. Here, as in paintings of both larger and smaller format, Braque was guided by two compositional imperatives--"one, to create images of an extreme density by an assemblage as compact as possible; the other, to deploy through the composition a larger rhythm of breathing" (P. Descargues, "The Work of George Braque," G. Braque, New York, 1978, p. 169). On the right side of the painting, fruit, glass, and napkin are superimposed one on top of another, in a manner derived from synthetic cubist practice. By contrast, the platter with fruit stands apart in its relatively straightforward simplicity.
Braque's lifelong preoccupation with objects, and their pictorial relationships to each other, is as significant here as in his cubist paintings done twenty-five years earlier. His objects "are admittedly the most humble, mundane, seemingly anonymous everyday items. All these objects truly belong to Braque, they are part of the tactile or manual space which he so frequently mentioned. Caressed by his hand-- which has held the glass, touched the guitar, poured water from the jug --and by his visionary imagination, they are the interface between the artist's inner world and the space where he works. The object then is not a barrier to thought, but on the contrary, stimulates it, becoming an integral part of the process of thought-painting which is at the core of Braque's work. The object becomes the subject of contemplation, in the fullest sense of the word" (I. Monod-Fontaine, "Georges Braque's Still-Lifes," Braque: Order and Emotion, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros, Greece, 2003, p.19).
The present painting represents a middle ground between these two tendencies in Braque's work, and in its intimate warmth, measured simplicity and balance most closely reflects a native French tradition in still-life painting derived from Chardin. Here, as in paintings of both larger and smaller format, Braque was guided by two compositional imperatives--"one, to create images of an extreme density by an assemblage as compact as possible; the other, to deploy through the composition a larger rhythm of breathing" (P. Descargues, "The Work of George Braque," G. Braque, New York, 1978, p. 169). On the right side of the painting, fruit, glass, and napkin are superimposed one on top of another, in a manner derived from synthetic cubist practice. By contrast, the platter with fruit stands apart in its relatively straightforward simplicity.
Braque's lifelong preoccupation with objects, and their pictorial relationships to each other, is as significant here as in his cubist paintings done twenty-five years earlier. His objects "are admittedly the most humble, mundane, seemingly anonymous everyday items. All these objects truly belong to Braque, they are part of the tactile or manual space which he so frequently mentioned. Caressed by his hand-- which has held the glass, touched the guitar, poured water from the jug --and by his visionary imagination, they are the interface between the artist's inner world and the space where he works. The object then is not a barrier to thought, but on the contrary, stimulates it, becoming an integral part of the process of thought-painting which is at the core of Braque's work. The object becomes the subject of contemplation, in the fullest sense of the word" (I. Monod-Fontaine, "Georges Braque's Still-Lifes," Braque: Order and Emotion, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros, Greece, 2003, p.19).