Looking through the Kaleidoscope: Fernand Léger and Cubism

Adam asked me to view Fernand Léger’s painting The Smokers, which is on display at the Guggenheim. Sadly, the Guggenheim is in the process of installing a new exhibit and has closed the bulk of the museum to viewers. While I couldn’t see The Smokers I did look for some of Léger’s work in the other museums. I found Woman with a Cat (1921) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Exit the Ballet Russes (1914) and The Baluster (1925) at the Museum of Modern Art. (Can you tell which title fits these three paintings that I've posted here?)

Léger’s work is known for incorporating the shapes of modern mechanisms into his artwork. One commentator said that he was fascinated with arranging elements in his artwork almost like children’s building blocks, using mechanical elements to construct a new machine age. Can you see this in his works here?

Léger served in World War I, which had a significant impact on many artists during this time. In World War I machines of war (aircraft, tanks, artillery) played a greater role than ever before. Some critics see Léger’s mechanism period as a response to the machines that he saw in the war. I also can’t help wondering if the order and precision (a stability, perhaps) of his painting might be in response to the chaos of the war itself.

How might World War I have influenced the artists of this time? J.R.R. Tolkien also served in this war, and his art (his novels) frequently vilifies machinery and argues for a return to nature. Is Léger taking an opposite approach? He had already begun to experiment with Cubism before the war, but after the war he begins his mechanism period. Why might this war lead to these two different perspectives?

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit that I didn’t know Léger’s work previously, but I didn’t. Before this trip my knowledge of Cubism was limited to . . . Well, to be honest, the only Cubist I could name was Picasso. But visiting these three museums and learning a bit more about this art movement has taught me to enjoy Cubism in a way that I hadn’t anticipated.

According to my trusty audio guide, a major tenant of Cubism is the artist’s desire to break down an object to its various planes or surfaces and to show the geometric patterns at play in these surfaces. They attempted to simplify the forms to their most basic shapes: cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres. We will learn and explore these principles more thoroughly later in the semester, so I really don’t want to get into it too much here. But I do want to share my growing appreciation of this movement. Once I learned this basic principle, what seemed to be “nonsense” came into clarity. Now I get satisfaction and pleasure in looking at these paintings, trying to see the images, shapes, and planes created by these artists.

Since I’m already being confessional, I will also confess that I’ve never really liked Picasso. Or rather I should say that I’ve never really cared for his two-eyes-on-the-side-of-the-face, purple-skinned Marie-Thérèse paintings. But during this trip I found myself drawn to Picasso’s Cubist era. And through Picasso, I discovered his co-collaborator Georges Braque. Picasso and Braque are often credited with having the most influence on the Cubist era.

Here are two of my favorite Cubist paintings from this trip: Braque’s Man with Guitar and Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin. Can you see these images in the paintings?