Still Life with Checked Tablecloth

On this day in 1887, Juan Gris, a Spanish Cubist painter, was born. Who else could we present today?

A master of visual disguise, Gris depicts a table crowded with everyday objects: coffee cups, slender wineglasses, a white-footed fruit compote filled with thickly painted grapes—shown simultaneously from the side and from above—a bottle of red wine, a bottle of Bass Extra Stout with its unmistakable red diamond label, a newspaper, and a guitar. At first glance, the scene appears to be a still life assembled from familiar café elements.

Yet the composition conceals a second, equally striking image: the head of a bull. The coffee cup at the lower center becomes the animal’s snout; a black-and-white concentric circle at left reads as a “bull’s eye;” the ale bottle transforms into an ear; and the curving edge of the guitar forms a horn. Even language plays its part in the illusion. The letters “EAU” on the wine label—ostensibly referring to Beaujolais—can just as convincingly be read as taureau, the French word for bull. 

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