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Braque did this lithograph at the age of 79, reminiscent of his papiers collés
(collage composition consisting only of pasted paper) rendered almost fifty years earlier—
Guitar and Program (1913) and Ace of Hearts (1914). The bird's shape is suggestive
of a guitar and heart— the miracle of the artist's brush bringing forth a birdsong
from his heart. Despite the bird's planar form, lacking volume or depth, it seems to hover at
an amazingly high altitude. This is achieved by the collage of newspaper columns resembling an
aerial view of rows of streets and houses. The green dabs of paint look like clouds or vegetation
beneath the solitary bird that's soaring in flight. One could even make out some of the news stories
in this collage: Max Ernst at 70— painter, poet, sage; the night of birds; a "Night and Day" poem;
Peking and the West; Senegal Independence; economic news; horse race results; news from Washington,
Britain, Belgium, Mexico, Costa Rica. Braques' news collage embraces the whole world, but his bird
is beyond this temporal world flying in the realm of the eternal. The ovals of Braque's earlier
collages served as picture frames carefully constructed with a compass. But here, Braque abandons
all mechanical devices in making his oval. Instead, he draws it freehand in one sweeping motion
like a Zen circle straight from his heart. Braque's giant bird ("GB") is now sanctified with a
surrounding halo, like Chuang Tzu's
celestial p'eng whose
wings span thousands of miles, soaring over this world with a transcendental point of view. (PYC)
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