Braque Day

There's a bit of a workstorm raging at NigeCorp, but it's time to put up a picture - and what better pretext than the birthday of Georges Braque, born on this day in 1882? He was famously the co-creator, with Picasso, of Cubism, on which they worked together intensively from 1908 to 1913. Braque survived the years of collaboration with Picasso's rampaging ego, and indeed was a perfect fit with his fellow artist, to such an extent that their works from this time can be almost impossible to distinguish. 'It was like being roped together on a mountain' Braque recalled. You bet it was...
 For myself, I have never warmed to pure Cubism, a style that seems more interesting - perhaps necessary - than beautiful. I prefer Braque's freer, more relaxed and colourful later work, produced in the years after the Kaiser War (in which he sustained serious head injuries), and indeed right up to his later years. He died in 1963 and is buried in the graveyard of the clifftop church at Varengeville-dur-Mer near Dieppe. His stained-glass windows in that church are very beautiful, but (in Cole Porter's word) unphotographable. You have to see them in situ, as they are. Vaut le detour - and then some.
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