Cubist Cache

Date:	1995
Medium:	Oil on canvas
Size inches:	44 x 56
Size cm:	111.8 x 142.2
Signature:	Signed and dated lower right and inscribed on the reverse
Location:	Private Collection, New Canaan, Connecticut

 

See Artist's Notes for the principal works quoted in Cubist Cache.
The interior: Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor-Scrapers, 1875. Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

Cubist Collection
Caillebotte's men scraping a floor extending the height of the walls. The table with black bust is taken from a still life by Georges Braque, but the bust is Picasso's. The balloon-like figure is a Picasso bather, carefully placed behind the Braque to give space and a feeling of pile-up. "Women Working with Buckets" by Malevich makes a general texture of cylinders which often show up in cubist texture. I found it more daring to use Malevich instead of Leger because there is more clutter. The easel is mine, it's here in the studio, and below is a Picasso still life with David Hockney chairs repeated. The lower and larger still life with black pear shapes is from Juan Gris and the blue musical instrument is Ozenfant. (Unpublished notebook entry, 1995)

What does Paris do with all of its cubist art in August? Cubist Cache is a summer painting. When Parisians go away on summer vacation they store their collections of cubist art in an empty room. The design of the wrought-iron balcony railing seen through the glass doors in my painting says that the room is a room in Paris. It is an empty room because Caillebotte's floor scrapers have finished their work and packed up their tools and left. In the orange light on the floor I have placed David Hockney's cubist "Chair" (repeated on a smaller scale) on either side of Picasso's table holding a skull and a pitcher. The diagonal decorative border from a 1915 still life by Juan Gris marks the transition to a section at the bottom of the painting where I have placed a still life of black pears from another Juan Gris painting on a cubist table of my own devising. (George Deem, 1998)

My own easel also appears in this painting, in the corner of the room to the right of the window. My own easel is of course not a cubist object. (George Deem, July 4, 2003)