Still Life with a Glass, Bottle and Playing Card

This collage was produced at a time when this new art medium became the most important experimental artistic tool in the exploration of Cubism. The Bass bottle, ace of clubs and glass appear in a number of Picasso’s collages made in spring 1914. The permeation of various levels of the technique (the collage paper is cut through so as to read “BASS”), coupled with the tension of Cubist perspective and naturalistic objectivity (the foot of the glass, the shadow cast by the card, the business card reading “Picasso”) is also distinctive of a number of other still−lifes created at this time. The English Bass company was famed for its production of beer that was also popular among artists. Édouard Manet depicted the beverage in his celebrated painting A Bar at the Folies−Bergères (1882) and James Joyce wrote about it in his novel “Ulysses”. The signature in the form of a printed business card deserves particular attention. In spring 1914, Picasso also used this artistic pun in another, similar collage featuring a bottle of Bass, a glass, a tobacco package and a business card.