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Lot Essay
En 1916, pendant une période de permission qui l'éloigne du front, Guillaume Apollinaire emmène Fernand Léger voir un film de Charlie Chaplin au Ciné-Montparnasse. La découverte du personnage de Charlot, cette silhouette qui parvient à réduire l'humain à "une espèce d'objet sec, vivant, mobile" constitue pour lui une véritable révélation. L'aboutissement de la mécanisation du personnage aura lieu en 1924 lors de la création du Ballet-Mécanique qu'il réalise avec Dudley Murphy.
In 1916, during a leave of absence that took him away from the front, Guillaume Apollinaire took Fernand Léger to see a Charlie Chaplin film at the Ciné-Montparnasse. For him, discovering the character Charlot, as the French fondly named Chaplin, this silhouette that managed to reduce a human being to "a kind of dry, living and moving object", was a true revelation. The culmination of Chaplin's influence on Léger's art came with creation of the Ballet-Mécanique, which he produced with Dudley Murphy.
(fig. 1) Fernand Léger, Charlot cubiste, 1924.
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
In 1916, during a leave of absence that took him away from the front, Guillaume Apollinaire took Fernand Léger to see a Charlie Chaplin film at the Ciné-Montparnasse. For him, discovering the character Charlot, as the French fondly named Chaplin, this silhouette that managed to reduce a human being to "a kind of dry, living and moving object", was a true revelation. The culmination of Chaplin's influence on Léger's art came with creation of the Ballet-Mécanique, which he produced with Dudley Murphy.
(fig. 1) Fernand Léger, Charlot cubiste, 1924.
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.