DEBORAH SOLOMON
293
neutral browns and grays. In Braque's
Pedestal Table
(1911), for instance, a
tiny, quivering rectangle of green is pinned into the lower left corner of an
otherwise brown work. There's something poignant about this patch of
green. In much the same way that the pedestal table of the painting's title is
barely recognizable in the welter of ambiguous planes, the little green
rectangle is barely noticeable among the overall tonalities of the work.
As
we
watch it disappear into an arrangement of browns, it's as if we're watching
nature itself fade from view, fade from art.
Later, after 1912, when Picasso and Braque started reintroducing
color into their work, they often floated flattened-out forms against a surface
of deep, glowing green. The last work in the exhibition is
Green Still Life,
and the title
is
fitting.
What are we to make of all this green? There are those who might
argue that it allows us to see that the early compositions of Cubism could be
extravagantly lush. I myself wouldn't go that far; I'm not among the critics
who like to argue that Analytical Cubism is more sensual than people realize.
Still, the green does affect the way we think about Cubism - and par–
ticularly the way we think about it in relation to the landscape. Generally,
Cubism is perceived as a movement that occurred indoors. When we think of
Picasso and Braque, we don't think of them posted before easels in the
countryside; we think of them seated at a table in their studios, with their
wine glasses and playing cards and newspapers; we think of them trans–
forming real objects into a new reality. But they didn't go all the way. Just as
they couldn't bring themselves to banish completely images of people and
objects from their work, they refused to dispense with the color green and
the old-fashioned things it evoked for them. It's as if they felt sad about hav–
ing to give up the physical world for the world of abstraction. That's what
makes their work so moving.
