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Lot Essay
Braque's still-lifes from the 1940s represent an important stage in the artist's lifelong exploration of depicting objects in space. With their flattened imagery and muted tones, works such as Les fruits sur la table are a result of Braque's experiments with Cubism from 1907 to 1914. Braque described his goal of reworking space and form:
Without having striven for it, I do in fact end by changing the meaning of objects and giving them a pictorial significance which is adequate to their new life. When I paint a vase, it is not with the intention of painting a utensil capable of holding water. It is for quite another reason. Objects are recreated for a new purpose: in this case, that of playing a part in a picture. Once an object has been integrated into a picture, it accepts a new density and at the same time becomes universal. If it remains an individual object this must be due to lack of improvisation or imagination. As they give up their habitual function, so objects become united by the relationships which sprung up between them and the picture and ultimately myself! (Quoted in D. Cooper, Braque, The Great Years, Chicago, 1972, p. 111)
Without having striven for it, I do in fact end by changing the meaning of objects and giving them a pictorial significance which is adequate to their new life. When I paint a vase, it is not with the intention of painting a utensil capable of holding water. It is for quite another reason. Objects are recreated for a new purpose: in this case, that of playing a part in a picture. Once an object has been integrated into a picture, it accepts a new density and at the same time becomes universal. If it remains an individual object this must be due to lack of improvisation or imagination. As they give up their habitual function, so objects become united by the relationships which sprung up between them and the picture and ultimately myself! (Quoted in D. Cooper, Braque, The Great Years, Chicago, 1972, p. 111)