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Lot Essay
Bottle and Drape belongs to a group of Caulfield's early paintings in which he has incorporated a type of grid as a device within which objects are depicted. He commented, 'The geometric devices were really a way of pointing up the figurative elements. I didn't feel capable at that time of putting the object on a table, and so forth, it seemed too much what I was trying to get away from at the time. I was using these formal devices to present a figurative element' (see M. Livingstone, Patrick Caulfield, Aldershot, 2005, pp. 21-2).
The geometric lines used in the present work are also used in Portrait of Juan Gris, 1963 (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester) and are a direct reference to the work of this artist. The still life subject matter that Caulfield has used also relates Bottle and Drape to the tabletop still lifes that Gris depicted.
Marco Livingstone comments in relation to Bottle and Drape, 'When British artists of his generation were looking across to New York rather than to Paris for guidance and inspiration, Caulfield, with his usual contrariness, was turning his attention resolutely to French modernist styles that had been created almost half a century earlier and that had long ceased to be a fashionable point of reference for younger artists even in that country. Caulfield's paintings, however, do not so much employ a Cubist or Purist language as to quote those idioms - reduced to a kind of visual shorthand - in a knowing and detatched way. In this he presaged strategies that were to become identified as 'post-modernist' two decades later. 'I suppose I have used one or two images which have appeared in Cubist paintings without them being done in the Cubist manner, such as the pipe. I suppose the bottle and glass are equivalent in that way. You can think of them in various ways. The bottle is a very female form, and the pipe is a very masculine symbol. I don't know if that's one reason why they're interesting, but they do say a lot really. They're like ready-made suggestions of life' (see exhibition catalogue, British Pop, Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes, 2005, pp. 409-10).
Unlike many of Caulfield's 1970s paintings, which follow a distinctly vertical format (see lot 105), Bottle and Drape is painted on a square support. Caulfield commented, 'The square is a difficult format to use. It just appealed to me in its anonymity. Once you do a picture that is horizontal it's a landscape format. If you do it vertically it's a figure. So this avoided these associations' (see exhibition catalogue, Patrick Caulfield: Paintings 1963-81, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1981, p. 15).
The geometric lines used in the present work are also used in Portrait of Juan Gris, 1963 (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester) and are a direct reference to the work of this artist. The still life subject matter that Caulfield has used also relates Bottle and Drape to the tabletop still lifes that Gris depicted.
Marco Livingstone comments in relation to Bottle and Drape, 'When British artists of his generation were looking across to New York rather than to Paris for guidance and inspiration, Caulfield, with his usual contrariness, was turning his attention resolutely to French modernist styles that had been created almost half a century earlier and that had long ceased to be a fashionable point of reference for younger artists even in that country. Caulfield's paintings, however, do not so much employ a Cubist or Purist language as to quote those idioms - reduced to a kind of visual shorthand - in a knowing and detatched way. In this he presaged strategies that were to become identified as 'post-modernist' two decades later. 'I suppose I have used one or two images which have appeared in Cubist paintings without them being done in the Cubist manner, such as the pipe. I suppose the bottle and glass are equivalent in that way. You can think of them in various ways. The bottle is a very female form, and the pipe is a very masculine symbol. I don't know if that's one reason why they're interesting, but they do say a lot really. They're like ready-made suggestions of life' (see exhibition catalogue, British Pop, Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes, 2005, pp. 409-10).
Unlike many of Caulfield's 1970s paintings, which follow a distinctly vertical format (see lot 105), Bottle and Drape is painted on a square support. Caulfield commented, 'The square is a difficult format to use. It just appealed to me in its anonymity. Once you do a picture that is horizontal it's a landscape format. If you do it vertically it's a figure. So this avoided these associations' (see exhibition catalogue, Patrick Caulfield: Paintings 1963-81, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1981, p. 15).