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拍品專文
Fernand Léger, Georges Braque et Pablo Picasso naquirent tous la même année. S’ils débutèrent comme modernistes par des recherches autour du cubisme, ils prirent chacun une voie différente et continuèrent leurs expérimentations les plus avant-gardistes jusqu’à la fin de leur vie. Parmi eux, Léger se distingue quant à lui en cela qu’il a exécuté l’une de ses plus belles et plus grandes toiles au crépuscule de sa vie, en 1954: l’état définitif de La Grande Parade (fig. 1), aujourd’hui conservé au Musée Solomon R. Guggenheim de New York. À l’approche de sa soixante-dixième année, loin de ralentir son travail, il semble au contraire plus impatient que jamais de s’engager dans de nouveaux projets. Il dirige alors en effet un vaste atelier capable de produire des vitraux, des sculptures monumentales ainsi que des mosaïques. Ses tableaux d’après-guerre déploient généralement l’une des deux approches formelles suivantes. Il traitait souvent un sujet deux fois, d’abord d’une manière, puis de l’autre. L’une de ses approches — la présente œuvre — consistait à définir la figure ou l’objet en utilisant des contours noirs qui contiennent une couleur spécifique qui peut dériver de l’objet représenté ou qui a pu être sélectionnée à des fins uniquement picturales. Dans l’autre approche, les contours noirs étaient retenus, voire renforcés, tandis que la couleur spécifique était laissée de côté. Il en résulte une imagerie plus plate, une conception plus graphique et épurée, entièrement rendue par des contours noirs sur un fond gris et noir en partie couvert d’aplats de couleur pure. Vif, coloré et palpitant, Le Linge qui Sèche, peint en 1947 se distingue par un style de composition plus libre et organique, caractéristique de la période d’après-guerre chez Léger, tout en se réappropriant le style de ses grandes compositions des années 1920. Sur cette toile complexe à grande échelle, les éléments de composition sont liés sur un plan unique et plat mais spatialement ambigu. Les objets et l’arrière-plan se fondent pour former un seul espace unifié. Les frontières irrégulières et tortueuses des éléments semblent anéantir le format rectangulaire de la toile. Par la suite, l’artiste utilisera cette façon de composer pour ses sculptures en bronze et ses céramiques peintes en relief. L’utilisation directe du bleu, du blanc et du rouge - couleurs symbolisant la France - indique également la dimension allégorique de cette toile, qui peut s’envisager comme un hommage à son pays natal bien que l’artiste affirme se servir d’un objet, «non pour sa valeur sentimentale, mais seulement pour sa valeur plastique». Léger écrivait: «La vie plastique, l’image, est constituée de rapports harmonieux entre les volumes, les lignes et les couleurs. Ce sont là les trois forces qui doivent gouverner les œuvres d’art. Si, dans l’organisation harmonieuse de ces trois éléments essentiels, l’on découvre que des objets, des éléments de la réalité, peuvent entrer dans la composition, cela peut être meilleur et donner plus de richesse à l’œuvre. Mais ils doivent être subordonnés aux trois éléments essentiels mentionnés plus haut... Abstraits, ces rapports sont parfois purement décoratifs. Mais si des objets figurent dans la composition—des objets libres dotés d’une authentique valeur plastique, il en ressort des images présentant autant de variété et de profondeur que l’image d’un sujet imité» (cité in E.F. Fry, éd., Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 155, 168 et 169). C’est bien la couleur qui confère à l’œuvre son sens de la profondeur malgré une apparente facture conventionnelle dans cette toile. Les vives couleurs primaires séparées par d’épais contours noirs créent un semblant d’espace à l’intérieur du plan du tableau. Cinq ans avant de réaliser la présente œuvre, Léger affirmait que « La couleur peut entrer en jeu avec une force surprenante et active, sans qu’il soit besoin d’y adjoindre des éléments intrusifs ou sentimentaux. On peut détruire le mur par l’application des tons purs... On peut, ce mur, le faire avancer, reculer, le rendre mobile visuellement. Tout cela avec de la couleur» (cité in ibid., p. 123). Le dernier style «mural» de Léger représente l’évolution ultime des principes de base de la peinture, mis en avant dans sa célèbre série Contrastes de formes dès 1913-1914, «l’ordonnance simultanée de trois qualités plastiques : les lignes, les formes et les couleurs» (cité in ibid., p. 4). Depuis les années 1930, Léger s’efforce de créer un art populaire, capable de toucher de manière claire et efficace le plus grand nombre puisque selon l’artiste, le grand public est réceptif à l’art mais manque d’occasions de l’apprécier. Ainsi, si le présent tableau est avant tout emprunt du langage que Léger a choisi pour son style mural tardif, Le Linge qui Sèche reste une œuvre universelle et engagée. Peter de Francia a observé que «l’intensité de la réalité est atteinte par le contraste entre des objets prosaïques et l’artifice pictural... Les peintures de Léger sont exorcisées par le mystère. Les éléments formels, utilisés avec parcimonie, invalident toute tendance à interpréter la figuration en termes de naturalisme...Chaque élément est complètement prévisible et lisible» (cité in ibid., p. 228).
Fernand Léger, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were all born within a year of each other; each had their beginnings as modernists in experimenting with Cubism, and they each painted prolifically to the end of lengthy careers. Léger holds the special distinction among the trio of having executed one of his greatest and largest canvases near the end of his life in 1954, the état définitif of La Grande Parade (fig. 1) (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). Far from slowing down, Léger appears to have grown ever more eager to engage in diverse projects as he approached his seventieth year. By that time, he directed a large atelier capable of producing stained-glass windows and monumental sculpture and mosaics. Léger’s post-war pictures usually display one of two formal approaches, and often he treated a subject twice, first in one and then in the other manner. One approach—as seen in the present work—was to define the figure or object using black contours which contain local colour that may have been derived from the actual object or arbitrarily selected for pictorial purposes. In the alternative approach, black contours were retained and even strengthened while local colour was discarded. The imagery is consequently flatter, the design more graphic and significantly reduced, having been rendered entirely as black outlines on a gray and black ground which has been partly covered with bands and patches of pure colour. The present spirited, colourful and vibrante works Le Linge qui Sèche of 1947 carries forward, in Léger’s more freely composed and organic post-war style, he precedents of the great compositions he had produced during the 1920s. Compositional elements are bound together in this complex and large-scale canvas on a single, flattened but spatially ambiguous plane. Objects and the ground merge into a single, unified space. The irregular and twisting borders of the composition moreover appear to negate the rectangular format of the canvas. The artist thereafter employed this means of enmeshing object with ground to guide the composition of his relief sculptures in bronze and painted ceramic. The straightforward use of blue, white and red— the French tricolour—also points to the allegorical dimension in this canvas, as a tribute to his native land, even if the artist would argue that he was simply using colours, “not for its sentimental value,” he declared, but solely for its plastic value. Léger wrote : “The plastic life, the picture, is made up of harmonious relationships among volumes, lines and colours. These are the three forces that must govern works of art. If, in organizing these three essential elements harmoniously, one finds that objects, elements of reality, can enter into the composition, it may be better and may give the work more richness. But they must be subordinated to the three essential elements mentioned above... Sometimes these relationships are merely decorative when they are abstract. But if objects figure in the composition—free objects with a genuine aesthetic value— pictures result that have as much variety and depth as any with an imitative subject” (quoted in E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 155, 168 and 169). It is colour that lends this work its sense of depth, despite the sparse modeling. Bright primary colours separated by thick black outlines, create the semblance of space within the picture plane. Five years before painting the present work Léger asserted that, “Colour can enter into play with a surprising and active force without any need to incorporate instructive or sentimental elements. A wall can be destroyed by the application of pure colours... A wall can be made to advance or recede, to become visually mobile. All this with colour” (quoted in ibid., p. 123). Léger’s late “mural” style represents the ultimate evolution of the basic principles of painting that he set forth in his celebrated Contrastes de formes series of 1913-1914, “the simultaneous ordering of three plastic components : Lines, Forms and Colours” (quoted in ibid., p. 4). Since the 1930s Léger had been striving to create a popular art that would communicate clearly and effectively among large numbers of people he believed would be receptive to art, but who had few opportunities to enjoy it. Even if Léger has cast this picture in the modern syntax of his late mural style, Le Linge qui Sèche is a universally communicative and engaging painting. Peter de Francia observed that, “Intensity of reality is achieved by the contrast of prosaic objects with pictorial artifice... Léger’s paintings are exorcized of mystery. Formalized elements, used sparingly, invalidate any tendency to interpret figuration in terms of naturalism... Each element is completely predictable and readable” (quoted in ibid., p. 228).
Fernand Léger, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were all born within a year of each other; each had their beginnings as modernists in experimenting with Cubism, and they each painted prolifically to the end of lengthy careers. Léger holds the special distinction among the trio of having executed one of his greatest and largest canvases near the end of his life in 1954, the état définitif of La Grande Parade (fig. 1) (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). Far from slowing down, Léger appears to have grown ever more eager to engage in diverse projects as he approached his seventieth year. By that time, he directed a large atelier capable of producing stained-glass windows and monumental sculpture and mosaics. Léger’s post-war pictures usually display one of two formal approaches, and often he treated a subject twice, first in one and then in the other manner. One approach—as seen in the present work—was to define the figure or object using black contours which contain local colour that may have been derived from the actual object or arbitrarily selected for pictorial purposes. In the alternative approach, black contours were retained and even strengthened while local colour was discarded. The imagery is consequently flatter, the design more graphic and significantly reduced, having been rendered entirely as black outlines on a gray and black ground which has been partly covered with bands and patches of pure colour. The present spirited, colourful and vibrante works Le Linge qui Sèche of 1947 carries forward, in Léger’s more freely composed and organic post-war style, he precedents of the great compositions he had produced during the 1920s. Compositional elements are bound together in this complex and large-scale canvas on a single, flattened but spatially ambiguous plane. Objects and the ground merge into a single, unified space. The irregular and twisting borders of the composition moreover appear to negate the rectangular format of the canvas. The artist thereafter employed this means of enmeshing object with ground to guide the composition of his relief sculptures in bronze and painted ceramic. The straightforward use of blue, white and red— the French tricolour—also points to the allegorical dimension in this canvas, as a tribute to his native land, even if the artist would argue that he was simply using colours, “not for its sentimental value,” he declared, but solely for its plastic value. Léger wrote : “The plastic life, the picture, is made up of harmonious relationships among volumes, lines and colours. These are the three forces that must govern works of art. If, in organizing these three essential elements harmoniously, one finds that objects, elements of reality, can enter into the composition, it may be better and may give the work more richness. But they must be subordinated to the three essential elements mentioned above... Sometimes these relationships are merely decorative when they are abstract. But if objects figure in the composition—free objects with a genuine aesthetic value— pictures result that have as much variety and depth as any with an imitative subject” (quoted in E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 155, 168 and 169). It is colour that lends this work its sense of depth, despite the sparse modeling. Bright primary colours separated by thick black outlines, create the semblance of space within the picture plane. Five years before painting the present work Léger asserted that, “Colour can enter into play with a surprising and active force without any need to incorporate instructive or sentimental elements. A wall can be destroyed by the application of pure colours... A wall can be made to advance or recede, to become visually mobile. All this with colour” (quoted in ibid., p. 123). Léger’s late “mural” style represents the ultimate evolution of the basic principles of painting that he set forth in his celebrated Contrastes de formes series of 1913-1914, “the simultaneous ordering of three plastic components : Lines, Forms and Colours” (quoted in ibid., p. 4). Since the 1930s Léger had been striving to create a popular art that would communicate clearly and effectively among large numbers of people he believed would be receptive to art, but who had few opportunities to enjoy it. Even if Léger has cast this picture in the modern syntax of his late mural style, Le Linge qui Sèche is a universally communicative and engaging painting. Peter de Francia observed that, “Intensity of reality is achieved by the contrast of prosaic objects with pictorial artifice... Léger’s paintings are exorcized of mystery. Formalized elements, used sparingly, invalidate any tendency to interpret figuration in terms of naturalism... Each element is completely predictable and readable” (quoted in ibid., p. 228).