At first glance, Picasso's Still-Life with Chair Caning of 1912 might seem like a mishmash of forms instead of a clear picture. But we can understand the image—and others like it—by breaking down Cubist pictorial language into parts. Almost at the edge of the canvas in the upper-right corner, there is the handle of a knife. The knife cuts a piece of citrus fruit.
Below the fruit, which is probably a lemon, is the white, scalloped edge of a napkin. To the left of these things and standing vertically in the top center of the canvas is a wine glass. Just at the top edge of the chair caning is the glass’s base, above it is the stem, and then the bowl of the glass. At eleven o’clock is the famous “JOU,” which means "game" in French, but also the first three letters of the French word for "newspaper".
One of the keys to understanding the importance of Cubism, of Picasso and Braque, is to consider their actions and how unusual they were for the time. When Braque, and then Picasso placed industrially-produced objects ("low" commercial culture) into the realm of fine art ("high" culture) they acted as artistic iconoclasts.
Moreover, they questioned the elitism of the art world, which had always dictated the separation of common, everyday experience from the rarefied, contemplative realm of artistic creation. Of equal importance, their work highlighted—and separated—the role of technical skill from art-making. Braque and Picasso introduced a “fake” element on purpose, not to mislead or fool their audience, but rather to force a discussion of art and craft, of high and low, of unique and mass-produced objects. They ask: “Can this object still be art if I don’t actually render its forms myself if the quality of the art is no longer directly tied to my technical skills or level of craftsmanship?"
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