Allen Memorial Art Museum bulletin.

              CUBISM
top left, the fan becomes transparent, merging with the table (and becoming in the final analysis, as all the other forms, the richly varied
painted surface of the canvas). Below that area this particular view of
the fan is interrupted by another open fan form, superimposed on the
first. The left and top edges of this second form are traced with broken
lines; the right edge is left continuous, since it delineates both views.
This dual reference is characteristic of the cubist idiom, wherein a single
line or edge often belongs to two different aspects of the same form, as
well as characterizing edges of two different forms.
The line describing the lowest right stick of the fan also defines the
boundary of the next group of planes and volumes, extending across from
the fan to the foot of the glass (fig. 8). The point of departure here appears to have been a book, again several aspects being welded into a
unified image. The wide tracings convey selected views of a partially
opened book, the curved form on the bottom suggests the base of the
spine, and the lines going out from it left and right, the binding. The
outer edges of the book are fairly continuous; the central and top sections are broken by sharplv edged forms associated with pages. The narrow and broken lines are related to other views of the book and pages, as
well as being repetitions, extensions, and inventions as analyzed in the
study of the glass.
The identification proposed here of the object as a book may seem
more valid and understandable if one looks at Picasso's drawing, Book,
reproduced (fig. 9), and if one imagines the artist's deliberate selection of
certain planes and lines (all straight except for the curve of the spine)."
Multiple views and slight shifting in position of book sections helped
Picasso create in the painting a complex organization of forms, any one
of which moves easily from angular to semi-circular, from stereometric to
flat, from opaque to transparent, and from cylindric to cubic. This form
activity and ambiguity are interwoven with a space activity and ambiguity so that any single solid or plane is located in some places in front
of and in others behind neighboring ones.1'
The spiral form on the top left is the last for which a possible iden-
14 Although this drawing, dated 1915 by Zervos, op. cit., II, 872, is considerably
later than the Oberlin painting, its inclusion is intended only to clarify the relationship to book, not the difference between analytic and synthetic cubism, which
interesting question is irrelevant to this essay.   Our illustration is from Zervos.
13 Compare another Picasso of the same date as The Glass of Absinthe, spring 1911,
called Palette, Brushes, Book by Victor Hugo, reproduced Zervos, op. cit., II,
260. In this work Picasso's analysis of the book is no doubt more immediately
recognizable, although possibly less refined than in the Oberlin painting.
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