When I first set foot upon the Guggenheim museum, I was impressed with the architecture of the building, wondering how someone was able to build a museum within a spiral. In this spiral were many exhibits full of wonderful paintings and sculptures made by artists in the modern era. Going through each exhibit and seeing each piece of artwork, I was consumed by all the different artwork there were, and admired how each artist had their own style of art. Although I saw a lot of art that I liked a lot, one particular piece that I liked the most from my experience at the Guggenheim was Pablo Picasso’s Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl.

 

According to Guggenheim’s description of this painting,  Picasso painted Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl during the summer of 1909 using oil paint. This piece of artwork is under a genre of still life, which is evident through the focus on the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl. Still life art features inanimate objects, which is what Picasso is depicting in this piece of artwork. Picasso used a cubist style of painting to create this still life art piece. Through this style of painting, Picasso broke up the image he was trying to paint into many defined geometric shapes, creating an almost abstract image. However, viewers of this painting are still able to clearly see what Picasso was trying to portray due to how the painting is not complete fragmented. By analyzing this painting further, it can be seen that Picasso included a lot of elements into this piece of artwork to make it become what is put up for all of us to view. 

 

Firstly, this painting is painted on a vertical rectangle canvas. This makes sense because paintings are usually vertical rectangle when there are objects to focus on, which in this case there are. Picasso made it clear that the focus of this painting is on the three inanimate objects that are shown. Having a painting horizontal rectangle is usually for a focus on the landscape, which does not make sense in this case. As for the overall structure in this painting, all the fragmented bits are in either square, diamond, or rectangular shapes. However, the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl seem to each look like triangles of their own. Not only that, if a line were to connect from one of these objects to the next, it would create its own triangle. This could show that Picasso tried to make everything chaotic in this painting through the usage of the quadrilaterals and fragmented pieces, but he purposely left the three inanimate objects unfragmented and shaped like triangles to show the stability those objects had in a painting full of chaos. 

 

As previously mentioned, Picasso used oil paint to create this piece of artwork. By using a brush, we can see that Picasso blended his strokes very well in some parts, while leaving some visible strokes in others. The blended portion is very evident in the upper half of the painting, where no brushstroke marks can be seen. On the other hand, in areas such as the portion around the carafe on the top right, visible brushstrokes can be seen. The brushstrokes are in thick, straight diagonal lines. In addition to those, more brushstrokes can be seen on the bottom right of the painting. These strokes are different from those just described because these are thinner, but longer, vertical lines. Brushstrokes can even be seen on the fruits in the fruit bowl, where the brushstrokes are smaller and less visible, but can still faintly be seen as going in diagonal lines. Just by having an overall look at this painting, it can be seen that Picasso incorporated many closed shapes due to the visible borders we can see around a lot of the shapes, but also included some areas with open shapes due to their being no distinct edges visible. For example, the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl can easily be identified because of their visible edges, which make them look like the object they’re supposed to. Not only that, there are also many fragmented pieces that seem to have definite edges like the one near the bottom right. However, many of the fragmented pieces can be considered as an open shape, such as the fragment near the bottom because there is no identifiable edge, so there is no way to know for sure where the shape ends. 

 

When it comes to the colors on this painting, Picasso decided to use mostly dull colors. On the top of the painting, which I assume to be a wall, has a mixture of gray and beige. As we move down the painting to the fragmented part, the fragmented shapes are a combination of different values of gray: from light to dark gray. Moving on to the carafe, it has a similar color to the fragments, but it has more of a metallic gray to it. The jug and the fruit bowl, on the other hand, are the most different in terms of color in this whole painting. The jug can be perceived to have a dull, mud brown color, whereas the fruit bowl is more of a dull tan color, while the fruits in the fruit bowl have a dark, spinach green color. When someone looks at this painting, they would definitely feel calm and relaxed just from all the dull colors. This probably makes sense because the setting seems to be in a home where one should feel calm and relaxed. 

 

In addition to the colors, Picasso uses elements of shading and luminosity to enhance his painting. There is not much evidence of shading that could be found except for the carafe and the fruit bowl. Looking at the carafe, it is lightest on the right and top sides of it, but as my eyes moved to the left, it gets darker and darker. Not only that, the color on the wall right behind the carafe is darker, which lets me conclude that the darkening of the color is the shadow of the carafe. For the fruit bowl, a shadow can be seen created from the bowl since right behind the bowl is a darkening of color. The shading and the shadows of these objects make it seem like there is volume in those objects. In addition, due to the placement of the shadow, I can conclude that when Picasso was painting this, there was a light source where he was. As for luminosity, the area that shows this illusion of light that catches the viewer’s eye would be the fruit bowl. Due to its shadow being very dark and the fruit bowl being a light color, it creates this illusion that there is light coming out of the fruit bowl. This can be supported by the fact that when someone first looks at the painting, the thing they would recall seeing first would most likely be the fruit bowl. 

 

Picasso also used scale and proportion to make sure the sizes of each object made sense. Assuming that the fragmented pieces is the table that the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl are on, Picasso made it look big by making the fragmented pieces take up most of the canvas. He even made the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl overlap a small part of the fragmented pieces, further indicating that the fragmented table is bigger than the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl. All in all, Picasso mainly determined the size of each object by making the bigger objects take up more canvas space, while the smaller objects take up less canvas space. 

 

Lastly, Picasso used the concept of illusionistic space to determine how some objects appear closer than others. For instance, he used overlapping to show how the objects in front appear closer than those in the back. This can be seen with the fruits because the fruit in the fruit bowl most in front and is covering the two other fruits in the back seems to be slightly closer than the two fruits due to their overlapping. Picasso also uses scale changes, which can be seen between the fruit bowl and the jug, which should, in reality, be similar in size. However, in the painting, the fruit bowl seems to be bigger than the jug, which causes the illusion that the fruit bowl is closer to us than the jug. Additionally, Picasso’s use of position for this painting also helps to determine what is closer to the viewer. This is evident when looking at the carafe, jug, and fruit bowl because the fruit bowl is placed the lowest out of the three objects on the canvas, while the jug and carafe are both placed near the top of the canvas. Due to the location on the canvas of where each of these objects are placed, those that are placed lower seem to be closer, thus the fruit bowl seems to be closer than both the jug and carafe. Since the carafe and jug are placed at around the same height on the canvas, they both seem to be equally as close to the viewer. 

 

Overall, the trip I had to the Guggenheim museum was a fun and new experience that I would definitely do again. Seeing so many different modern paintings and sculptures amazed me because I was able to see how different art has become as time progressed. I was hardly able to spot one painting that looked anything close to the paintings people prior to the modern art era would’ve done. Not only that, paintings like Picasso’s Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl was something that only Picasso could have thought of because the skill and creativity that had to go into making a painting like this just puts me at a loss of words. This goes for all the other paintings and sculptures that I had a chance to view. All in all, Picasso’s Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl is one of the most interesting pieces of artwork I have ever seen, and it definitely puts me in shock to see how someone was able to create a work like this.