Frames of Reference: "Table" and "Tableau" in Picasso's Collages and Constructions Author(s): Christine Poggi Source: Art Journal, Vol. 47, No. 4, Revising Cubism (Winter, 1988), pp. 311-322 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776981 Accessed: 07/09/2010 18:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org Frames of Reference:"Table" and "Tablea u" in Picasso's Collages and Constructions By Christine Poggi In the spring of 1912, Picasso pasted a piece of oilcloth printed with a trompe-l'oeil chair-caning pattern to the surface of a small oval canvas repre- senting a cafe still life (Fig. 1). This work, which he also framed with a coarse rope, has acquired legendary sta- tus in the history of art as the first deliberately executed collage; the first work of fine art, that is, in which materi- als appropriatedfrom everyday life, rel- atively untransformed by the artist, intrude upon the traditionally privileged domain of painting.' Picasso's Still Life with Chair-Caning challenged some of the most fundamental assumptions about the nature of painting inherited by Western artists from the time of the Renaissance, including our understand- ing of how works of art exist in the world. This paper will address the ways in which Picasso's collages undermine both classical and "modernist" models for understanding the ontological status of works of art, by instituting an ambig- uous play with frames and framing motifs, as well as with the relation of table (the plane of actuality) and Fig. 1 Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning, spring 1912, oil and oilcloth tableau (the plane of illusion). stuck on oval canvas, framed with rope, 10/2 x 133/4".Paris, Musee Picasso. The two most frequently invoked paradigms for explaining how works of innovations of Cubism, especially by Picasso's collages, however, render art should be regarded are the window those claiming that Cubism represents a the project of realism problematic by (or mirror), a model most clearly articu- superior mode of realism, often called undermining the viewer's ability to lated in the Renaissance theories of "conceptual realism." Cubist works are experience or read a work through the Alberti, and the self-sufficient object, a frequently said to exemplify this new application of a single, compelling para- model that can be traced at least as far mode of realism by rejecting the window digm. Instead, his collages, beginning back as the eighteenth century to Kant's paradigm in favor of the conceptual with the Still Life with Chair-Caning, early modernist aestheticism. Both of representation of multiple views, or by often juxtapose the two prevailing para- these apparently opposed models lay emphasizing the material aspects of the digms-the window and the object-so claim to realism: the window by provid- work of art as a self-sufficient object. that each is defined in relation to the ing a convincing view of reality, the Yet this effort to see in Cubism a new other. Picasso refers to the model of object by exemplifying its own material mode of realism is ultimately a way of painting as window through the vertical reality. Not surprisingly, these models taming Cubism by recasting it in the plane of the tableau. This is the plane have been used to explain the formal mold of a traditional project. that corresponds to normal upright Winter 1988311 viewing posture, and therefore is the essential information about the vailing standards of pictorial unity, both classical plane of pictorial illusion. subject as he could. When he sub- academic and avant-garde. The notion Picasso refers to the self-sufficient divides and facets form, it is in of pictorial unity was a crucial factor in object through the horizontal plane of an attempt to break through to its the critical attempt to define the onto- the table, the plane of real objects that inner structure.... One gets the logical status of the Cubist work. For the exist in three-dimensional space. The impression that Picasso is striving Cubist work to assert its material and juxtaposition of table and tableau, and for some ultimate pictorial truth, formal self-sufficiency, it had to appear its implications for the realist inter- some absolute representation to be internally coherent, governed by pretation of Picasso's collages, are the of reality.2 laws derived from the medium itself. of this subjects essay. Elsewhere in his asserts Yet, for the Cubist work to be inter- text, Golding as that "the Cubists saw their as preted "conceptually"realist, the sta- of the most assertions paintings and of the referent had to One frequent constructed objects having their own bility actuality made about the Cubist work of art be Pictorial then took the independent existence, as small, self- posited. unity is that it redefined the status form of a creative of ontological contained worlds, not reflecting the out- "synthesis" objec- of the work of art. No longer modeled on side world but it in a com- tively known information. In either case, the classical notion that a is recreating favorable critics tended to see painting pletely new form."3Collage, a early like a window onto the technique Cubist the as transparent invented by Picasso and in 1912, works, including collages, world, Cubist works are said to be con- Braque the ideal of is for Golding "the logical outcome" of exemplifying pictorial unity. ceived as self-sufficient Kahnweiler, for autonomous, this conception of Cubist works as "self- Daniel-Henry example, critics in and described Cubism as on objects. Early particular, contained, constructed objects," for the taking (and indeed some of the artists themselves, inclusion of different materials in col- solving) problems that are "the basic that in the norms tasks of to three emphasized rejecting lages "emphasized in a very concrete painting: represent of imitation the artist was liberated dimensions and color on a flat surface, way their weight and solidity as material from the constraints of both tradition and to them in the of objects."4 Golding does not acknowl- comprehend unity and nature. The Cubist artist that surface." And this was to be thereby edge any slippage or change in his defi- appeared to achieve an unprecedented nition of Cubist realism from 1909 to achieved with "no pleasant 'composi- tion' but godlike power of creation, adding to but the of uncompromising, organically 1912, emphasizes continuity articulated structure."6 the world of things new "objects" whose the aesthetic intent of the movement Kahnweiler in- material affirmed what was sisted, however, that this "return to the presence before and after the invention of collage: described as a new kind of "realism." "... while coll involved new unity of the work of art, in the desire papier to create not Here, however, an essential, recurring methods of work and initiated almost at sketches, but finished and autonomous paradox in the interpretationof Cubism once a new in the art of Picasso organisms,"7be reconciled phase with the function arises. For insofar as the Cubist "ob- and it did not involve fun- representational Braque, any of ject" is taken to exemplify concrete damental of aesthetic.... Cub- painting. change In so being or autonomous self-presence, it ism continued to be an art of its doing, Kahnweiler turned to his realism; recent must refuse the function of matter remained the reading of Kant, which provided subject same, him with a model for representation. as did the interests and intentions of the interpretation This has unno- of Picasso's "great advance made at paradox gone largely the painters."5 ticed by most critics and historians of Similar discussions of the realist Cadaques" in 1910. This advance-the Cubism. Typically, those who assert the intent of Cubist artists dominate much piercing of the closed form-could then be seen as a means of objecthood of Cubist works also assert of the literature on Cubism without combining dif- any ferent that Cubist formal innovations were reference to the contradictions inherent views of objects into a synthetic, intended to the viewer more com- perceptually unified, whole: "Instead of give in this type of analysis. Yet a theory of information about the essential an the plete realism based on the material presence analytical description, painter nature of in the world. can, if he also create in this things everyday of the object as a self-contained world prefers, way These critics and art historians claim a synthesis of the or in the words does not coexist easily with a theory object, that the Renaissance of Kant, 'put together the various con- by rejecting single- of realism based on the quantity of point perspective system and accidental information about the world ceptions and comprehend their variety conveyed in "8 effects of light Cubist artists were able outside the frame.