“Newspaper, Bottle, Packet of Tobacco” is an artwork by Georges Braque, dating from 1914 and created in France. This piece is crafted using a mix of charcoal, collage, gouache, and pencil on cardboard, measuring 52.4 cm in height and 58.6 cm in width. It is a quintessential example of Synthetic Cubism, an art movement that Braque helped pioneer. The genre of the artwork is still life, and it is housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
The artwork features a pastiche of fragmented objects, representing everyday items such as a newspaper, a bottle, and a packet of tobacco, interwoven into a unified composition. The collage elements and the use of charcoal and pencil create a layered texture that challenges traditional notions of space and perspective. The muted color palette of browns, grays, and whites, synonymous with the Synthetic Cubism movement, serves to further abstract and harmonize the composition. One can observe how the pieces of collage material appear to overlap and intersect, symbolizing the convergence of different aspects of reality into a single visual plane. The interplay of shapes and the careful placement of collage elements exhibit Braque’s exploration of visual and tactile sensations, blurring the line between painted representation and real material. Through this work, Braque invites viewers to decode the fragmented visual clues and engage with the complexities of sight and interpretation.