Breakfast

The third Cubist, Juan Gris, glued down printed wood-grain paper and a torn newspaper, painted a café breakfast on top, and hid his own name in the headline.

1. 1
   JOURNAL — and his name

   A torn strip of newspaper reads “…OURN…” — journal, the French daily — and just below it, “…ZA GRIS.” That last word is the painter signing his work inside the picture: Gris means “gray” in French, and here it is set in newsprint, a pun and a signature in one.
2. 2
   The cup and saucer

   Dead center, a white coffee cup and saucer are drawn with almost old-fashioned, rounded clarity — solid, shaded, completely readable. Gris lets you have the real object, then surrounds it with flat pasted planes, so realism and abstraction share one table.
3. 3
   The coffee pot

   To the left, the tall pale shape of a coffee pot or pitcher rises out of the composition. Notice how Gris splits it down a clean vertical seam — light on one side, shadow on the other — slicing a single object into two views without ever losing it.
4. 4
   Imitation wood-grain

   That wood-grain is not painted: the tabletop, the legs at the bottom, and the strips behind are cheap, factory-printed wood-grain paper, glued down (Gris used two different kinds). A mass-produced fake of timber, standing in for the real café table: collage doing the work paint used to do.