Pipe and Wineglass

Watermark: none visible through lining.
Braque and Picasso invented the papier collé (pasted paper) technique in 1912, launching a new phase in the development of Cubism--a shift from the searching dissection of planes during the first, analytic phase toward a more constructive, synthetic rearrangement of reality. In the present composition, Picasso used overlapping pasted elements to disrupt the logical perception of the still-life objects, emphasizing the play between flatness and illusion. Thus the pipe appears both in the foreground and as part of the background paper, while the cut-out in the brown paper on which the glass is drawn reveals both what is inside and what is beneath. Such a drawing is directly related to Picasso's contemporary experiments in sculpture, notably his assemblages in cardboard, wood, and metal.