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GERMAN
Léger, Fernand
born: 1881 Argentan, France
died: 1955 Gifsur-Yvette, near Parls
Fernand Léger's involvement with Cubism (ed to the development
of a highly individual style that relied strongly on geometric elements.
His machines and the machine-like people that worked them were built up
oftube or pipe shapes, which brought him the nickname of "tubiste". The
Pink Tugo (1918) shows an appreciation of modern technology, which, as
Karl Ruhrberg writes, "Leger not only did not reject, as his Cubist friends
did, but lent... joyous and optimistic form in a coloratian based on bright,
sometimes almost garish red, blue and yellow." The human figure at the
(eft edge of the canvas resembles a robot, as if he were part and parcel
of the smokestacks, anchor chains, sirens, silos and warehouses of the
harbor where the tugboat has moored. Looking at the picture one has the
sense of being able to hear the sirens wail, the pipes spout steam, and
the machinery clatter. Tbe Twins (or Gemini) (1929-1930) is a composition
resembling a stil) life, consisting of diverse contrasting shapes and elements
floating in space. The human figures set against a dark background, which
have the appearance of quotes from another picture or visitors from some
obscurely remernbered dream, call up associations with dancers, or a constellation
in the night sky. The oil and charcoal picture The Divers was done in 1942
for the private residence of Wallace K. Harrison, an architect, on Long
Island The inspiration for the motif came to Léger as he was walking
on the beach at Marseille, in 1940. "The idea... occurred to me in the
South he recalled. "Immediately afterwards I travelled to the United States,
and then one day I went to a swimming place." There Leger saw not just
five or six divers, but two hundred. "You could no langer tell to whom
any particular head, leg, or arm belonged ... So in my picture I jumbled
the limbs, and realized that in this way I was being much more honest than
Michelangelo when he concentrated on each individual muscle." With time
Lcger's art took on an increasing social commitment, becoming an expression
of solidarity with the nameless members of a mass society. At the end of
this development staod the prajection of a concrete utopia, a free world
without repression or exploitation in which labor and leisure would be
equal sources of joy. A favorite venue for this vision was the circus,
where work and play seemed indistinguishable. In these paintings Léger's
dancers and acrobats again and again assume a certain pose: one hand raised
above their head, as if waving to or saluting someone. The drawing Head
of a Woman (1937) is an example from the series. Here the spontaneous gesture
has become one of serenity and passive musing. The neoclassical scheme
in depicting the figure, which Léger worked out in parallel with
Pablo Picasso and Alexander Archipenko in the 1920s, anticipated his 1954
rendering of a Country Outing, a salient example of Leger's late style.
It is one in a long series of artists' evocations of Sunday, the day of
rest on which plain people come closest to realizing an earthly paradise.
It is also a "group picture with ladies," in which the figures are expanded
to monumental proportions and given idealized features.
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