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Lot Essay
'For me this is the crucial moment. If I get out (of the army) I'll be able to paint. I'll be able to work! My horizon stops there, it's the best thing that I know.' So wrote Fernand Léger to his dealer Léonce Rosenberg in January 1918 about his enthusiasm for his prospects in the coming year (Fernand Léger, quoted in Fernand Léger: The Rhythm of Modern Life, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Basel, 1994, p. 68). In the summer of the year Léger gained a provisional release from the army and signed an exclusive three year contract with Rosenberg. Painted in October, still one month before the Armistice, Le mécanicien dans l'usine (The Mechanic in the Factory) is one of the first paintings Léger made after his release from military duty. Depicting a lone human figure integrated into a new and semi-abstract world of mechanics and machinery, the painting signals the artist's determination to embrace the new 'mechanical elements' of the modern world and to draw his subject matter from the new reality it seemed to be presenting to him.
The subject of a factory worker immersed in a world of machinery was one that was particularly appropriate at this time in France. With the war still persisting, the French in 1918 were continuing to fight on two fronts, one in the trenches, the other on the production line, where, on occasion, troops had had to be pulled in from front-line duty to assist in the factories. More importantly for Léger however, whose experience as a frontline soldier had taught him to appreciate the strange beauty as well as the awesome power of modern machinery, there was little difference in his vision of the new mechanical world between the soldier and the factory mechanic. Both figures were human beings integrating with a new formal language that was increasingly being imprinted on modern life by the power and rhythm of machinery. Léger made this equation several years later recalling how the sound of the power hammers at a Chicago factory had alerted his memory and sent his mind back to the war, 'that sort of sound,' he recalled, 'a dry and hurried din. In a second I'm back at Verdun. It's 1917. The French advance - preparing to attack with the .75mm cannons exactly the same rhythm' (Fernand Léger, "Chicago" in Plans, no. 11, 1932, quoted in ibid., 1994, p. 60).
Similarly, Léger understood how the pace and rhythm of machinery was transforming the visual aesthetics of modern life. 'Every day one can see the way lines behave in relation to the manner in which industrial machines are made,' he observed, giving the example of a car or locomotive - machines 'both dominated by horizontal lines' that 'convey an impression of speed, even when they are not moving' (Fernand Léger cited in Peter de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 47).
It was this rhythm and its affect on life that he attempted to convey in his new paintings. Drawing on his experience with the Cubistic break-up of form that he had explored in his earlier paintings, Léger now adopted the flat forms and brilliant pure colour of the advertising hoardings and billboards he saw springing up all over Paris, to produce a rich abstract pictorial language. A montage-like assemblage of flat and predominantly geometric forms intersecting with one another into harmonious constructions, this was a pictorial language aimed at instilling a sense of and appreciation for this mechanical rhythm in the viewer.
It was, in essence a simple and reductive language that Léger hoped would be understood by everyone and usher in a new age of integration between man and machine. In this, Léger's mechanical aesthetic was the opposite of the Dadaists' mockery and deconstruction of machine culture in the form of Duchamp and Picabia's eroticised machines or the subversive and fragmentary derision and chaos of photomontage. Léger's own brand of montage, sometimes cinematic in scope and style, was aimed at establishing and revealing a harmony between the image of man and that of machine culture. Le mécanicien dans l'usine is one of the first of Léger's paintings to attempt to do this. Its clever and rhythmical pattern of light and shadow - of the kind to be found in the interior of a factory - moving across an ambiguous but suggestive montage of geometric form and colour combines to create a bold and intricate composition that is strongly suggestive of mechanical complexity and order. Half-merged into this visual play of dark shadow and rich colour is the semi-abstracted figure of a mechanic standing casually, one leg raised, contentedly admiring his mechanical environment. Integrated into the composition in such a way that both figurative and abstract elements become interdependent upon one another, the painting establishes an impressive fusion of abstract, mechanical and human form that speaks eloquently and optimistically about man the inventor and his new world.
The subject of a factory worker immersed in a world of machinery was one that was particularly appropriate at this time in France. With the war still persisting, the French in 1918 were continuing to fight on two fronts, one in the trenches, the other on the production line, where, on occasion, troops had had to be pulled in from front-line duty to assist in the factories. More importantly for Léger however, whose experience as a frontline soldier had taught him to appreciate the strange beauty as well as the awesome power of modern machinery, there was little difference in his vision of the new mechanical world between the soldier and the factory mechanic. Both figures were human beings integrating with a new formal language that was increasingly being imprinted on modern life by the power and rhythm of machinery. Léger made this equation several years later recalling how the sound of the power hammers at a Chicago factory had alerted his memory and sent his mind back to the war, 'that sort of sound,' he recalled, 'a dry and hurried din. In a second I'm back at Verdun. It's 1917. The French advance - preparing to attack with the .75mm cannons exactly the same rhythm' (Fernand Léger, "Chicago" in Plans, no. 11, 1932, quoted in ibid., 1994, p. 60).
Similarly, Léger understood how the pace and rhythm of machinery was transforming the visual aesthetics of modern life. 'Every day one can see the way lines behave in relation to the manner in which industrial machines are made,' he observed, giving the example of a car or locomotive - machines 'both dominated by horizontal lines' that 'convey an impression of speed, even when they are not moving' (Fernand Léger cited in Peter de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 47).
It was this rhythm and its affect on life that he attempted to convey in his new paintings. Drawing on his experience with the Cubistic break-up of form that he had explored in his earlier paintings, Léger now adopted the flat forms and brilliant pure colour of the advertising hoardings and billboards he saw springing up all over Paris, to produce a rich abstract pictorial language. A montage-like assemblage of flat and predominantly geometric forms intersecting with one another into harmonious constructions, this was a pictorial language aimed at instilling a sense of and appreciation for this mechanical rhythm in the viewer.
It was, in essence a simple and reductive language that Léger hoped would be understood by everyone and usher in a new age of integration between man and machine. In this, Léger's mechanical aesthetic was the opposite of the Dadaists' mockery and deconstruction of machine culture in the form of Duchamp and Picabia's eroticised machines or the subversive and fragmentary derision and chaos of photomontage. Léger's own brand of montage, sometimes cinematic in scope and style, was aimed at establishing and revealing a harmony between the image of man and that of machine culture. Le mécanicien dans l'usine is one of the first of Léger's paintings to attempt to do this. Its clever and rhythmical pattern of light and shadow - of the kind to be found in the interior of a factory - moving across an ambiguous but suggestive montage of geometric form and colour combines to create a bold and intricate composition that is strongly suggestive of mechanical complexity and order. Half-merged into this visual play of dark shadow and rich colour is the semi-abstracted figure of a mechanic standing casually, one leg raised, contentedly admiring his mechanical environment. Integrated into the composition in such a way that both figurative and abstract elements become interdependent upon one another, the painting establishes an impressive fusion of abstract, mechanical and human form that speaks eloquently and optimistically about man the inventor and his new world.