ABSTRACT
Cubism looks backward in its analysis of visual reality and forward in its subjugation of visual reality towards the complete disregard of the object in non-objective’ painting. In an earlier painting by Pablo Picasso, Glass and Jar, 1908, a fairly conventional glass stands in front of ajar, the distorted view of whose side appears in the glass. Of the narrow traced lines, the horizontals and verticals on the right are consistent with Picasso’s combination of rectilinear and curvilinear aspects of a single object, as met before in the glass analysis. The narrow and broken lines are related to other views of the book and pages, as well as being repetitions, extensions and inventions as analysed in the study of the glass. In The Glass of Absinthe a similar circle segment appears to the right of the double scroll. Likewise significant as unifying elements in the painting’s design are the brushwork and the texture of the paint surface.
