Still Life with Fish
Georges Braque
GEORGES BRAQUE, 1941. OIL ON CANVAS.
While Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso began together, creating the vocabulary of cubism that would go on to inform the entire 20th century art movement, by 1941 the two had gone their separate ways. Picasso was restless, experimenting further and defying boundaries at every turn as he became increasingly unclassifiable in his practice. Braque, on the other hand, was rigorous, disciplined, and singularly focused on mastering Cubism and continuing to burn the torch for the art movement that he developed. His later works, such as Still Life with Fish here, are some decades removed from the origins of the movement and the increased wisdom is clear. Gone are the dizzying, erratic geometries that obscured the subject into kaleidoscopic wonder and in their place is a gentle, deftly handled study of perspective. The wildness of youth and excitement of the new has been tempered by a deep understanding of his forms and style, and Still Life with Fish is a masterful example. Its radicalness creeps up on you - at first glance it looks like a recognisable scene but the more you engage, the more you see just how many perspectives Braque shows this simplicity in. While Picasso may have answered more questions in his wild career, Braque answers are perhaps more concise.