Two other still lifes from the period indeed represent fruits in a bowl, one of which was claimed by Picabia's wife, Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia, to be closely related to Caoutchouc compositionally.

In addition to Picabia's Caoutchouc, early abstractions included, Wassily Kandinsky's Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor), 1913,[7] Improvisation 21A, the Impression series, and Picture with a Circle (1911);[8] František Kupka's Orphist works, Discs of Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colors), 1912[9] and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912; Robert Delaunay's series entitled Simultaneous Windows and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2 (1912–13);[10] Léopold Survage's Colored Rhythm (Study for the film), 1913;[11] Piet Mondrian's Tableau No.

[4][14] During the months of May or June 1912, Picabia—along with Marcel Duchamp and Guillaume Apollinaire—went to see the stage version of Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique in Paris at the Théâtre Antoine.

The palm bloomed first and one of the sons became king, setting off a feud that resulted in the death of the newly crowned king, whose decaying body was displayed resting against the aged rubber tree (caoutchouc caduc); the rubber tree itself became the symbol for the end of a branch of family lineage.

Art historian and critic Bernard Dorival [fr] has vehemently argued in favor of the abstract nature of Caoutchouc, while Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia referred to it as a still life, and the artist Philip Pearlstein, who wrote his thesis on Picabia, described the subject of the painting as a bouncing rubber ball.