“Still Life with a Bottle of Rum”

Pablo Picasso, one of the world’s most celebrated artists during his time, was

born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. He was very versatile in most forms of art

and was one of the most productive and revolutionary artists in the history of Western

painting. Picasso worked with many styles of art, such as surrealism, realism, and later,

cubism. Today we will analyze a Spanish painting, titled “Still life with a Bottle of Rum”,

which is currently at exhibition gallery 905 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting originated at Céret, a small town below the French Pyrenees where

he worked alongside Georges Braque during the 1911. The medium is oil on canvas

and its dimensions are measured at 24 ⅛ inches x 19 ⅞ inches, or 61.3 cm x 50.5 cm.

The colors that were used were contained within the spectrum of bronze and black,

monochromatic. The painting is mainly of abstract fragments of varying shapes varying

in degrees of entropy. Most experts have stated that the work was difficult to interpret

due to its complexity and fragmentation of elements (McQuillan). Although amongst the

craziness in the painting, a bottle of rum can be visually decipherable in the middle in

accordance to the title of the work. The letters were assumed to form the name of the

newspaper agency in Céret during Picasso’s time (metmuseum.org). People use art as

a medium for expression, so Picasso might have shared to the observers his own taste

of comfort with the bottle of alcohol. He also did not want to copy the beauty of nature

and reality as he merely wanted to mirror the current state of the environment or society

during his time with intricacy and exquisiteness.

Picasso mainly bases his artwork with the concept of Cubism and relativity while

including a hint of his experiences and the environment. He focuses on how the picture
is observed by the audience not what is seen. ( Pablo Picasso and Cubism). Basically,

Picasso is more of a subjective type than an objective person. He felt that we do not see

an object from one angle or perspective, but rather from many angles selected by sight

and movement. In this case, this painting, the “Still life with a Bottle of Rum”, was one of

Picasso’s analytical cubism paintings. The monochromatic painting was abstract and

featured fragmented words.

No matter the mysteries and questions shrouding the painting, it is still widely

considered as one of Picasso’s most dubious paintings to date. The way he was able to

construct subjective feelings from an abstract, Cubism work was very impressive as

gallery goers continue to applaud the majestic work of one of the best artists of all time.

Lastly, the artwork backs up the fact that drawing expression in art has no bounds even

if they deviate from the common methods.

Works Cited:

Melissa McQuillan. “Picasso, Pablo.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford

University Press. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. http://0-

www.oxfordartonline.com.library.scad.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T067316

Metmuseum.org, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/490018.

Pablo Picasso and Cubism, https://news.masterworksfineart.com/2018/10/31/pablo-

picasso-and-cubism#:~:text=Picasso%20believed%20in%20the%20concept,selected

%20by%20sight%20and%20movement.