.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Executed in 1918, Contrastes de formes shows a whirl of springs, coils, wheels, of factory-made elements whirring in a new modern harmony. This is a picture of machinery for the age of machinery. Created at the end of the First World War, it shows Léger combining his experiences of conflict with his interest in order and in seeking a modern means for truly capturing the world in pictorial form. Gone are the outmoded means of the Old Masters, replaced by a visual language that is appropriate for the world of machinery, for the inhabitant of modern life who travels at speed and sees the world in a blur. 'The view through the door of the railroad car or the automobile windshield, in combination with the speed, has altered the habitual look of things,' Léger explained. 'A modern man registers a hundred more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist; so much so that our language, for example, is full of diminutives and abbreviations. The compression of the modern picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms, are the result of all this' (F. Léger, Functions of Painting, ed. E.F. Fry, London, 1973, pp. 11-12).
In many ways, this new visual language depended on formal concerns, on the Contrastes de formes of the title. 'Pictorial realism is the simultaneous ordering of three great plastic components: Lines, Forms and Colours' (Léger, ibid., p. 4). Here, this is evident in the rigid geometry of the lines and triangles which jostle against the circles, with many of the elements filled in with bold blue, red and green.
Léger's time on the front line during the First World War left an indelible mark. He was treated to many epiphanies, some of them grotesque and horrific, some of them quite the contrary. Surrounded by la vraie France, he developed a concern with creating art that would be enjoyed by the modern worker. And surrounded by the slick and shiny technology of the cannons, tanks and machineguns, he developed a new interest in machines as the true icons of the age of speed and industry in which he lived. Accordingly, a visual idiom linked to the world of factories and machines came to dominate his pictures. In Contrastes de formes, this influence is evident, but so too is a more specific influence-- that of the hospital. While in its composition Contrastes de formes is clearly linked to many of his most famous paintings from this period, such as Cylindres colorés of 1918 (Bauquier, no. 123; fig. 1) and Le typographe, 2ème état of the following year (B., no. 188; Staatsgalerie Modern Kunst, Munich), it also shares specific elements with Le poêle, 1918 (B., no. 121), in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. That work was linked not to the Front, but to Léger's convalescence in the Hôpital Villepinte and in Vernon, where he was recuperating in 1918, hinting at the possibility that the dynamic centrifugal forms of the present lot owe their existence to the crisp and clinical objects and equipment of the hospital ward.
In many ways, this new visual language depended on formal concerns, on the Contrastes de formes of the title. 'Pictorial realism is the simultaneous ordering of three great plastic components: Lines, Forms and Colours' (Léger, ibid., p. 4). Here, this is evident in the rigid geometry of the lines and triangles which jostle against the circles, with many of the elements filled in with bold blue, red and green.
Léger's time on the front line during the First World War left an indelible mark. He was treated to many epiphanies, some of them grotesque and horrific, some of them quite the contrary. Surrounded by la vraie France, he developed a concern with creating art that would be enjoyed by the modern worker. And surrounded by the slick and shiny technology of the cannons, tanks and machineguns, he developed a new interest in machines as the true icons of the age of speed and industry in which he lived. Accordingly, a visual idiom linked to the world of factories and machines came to dominate his pictures. In Contrastes de formes, this influence is evident, but so too is a more specific influence-- that of the hospital. While in its composition Contrastes de formes is clearly linked to many of his most famous paintings from this period, such as Cylindres colorés of 1918 (Bauquier, no. 123; fig. 1) and Le typographe, 2ème état of the following year (B., no. 188; Staatsgalerie Modern Kunst, Munich), it also shares specific elements with Le poêle, 1918 (B., no. 121), in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. That work was linked not to the Front, but to Léger's convalescence in the Hôpital Villepinte and in Vernon, where he was recuperating in 1918, hinting at the possibility that the dynamic centrifugal forms of the present lot owe their existence to the crisp and clinical objects and equipment of the hospital ward.