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Lot Essay
In his still life paintings of the late 1920s, Léger sought to foster "a new realism," in which "ordinary manufactured objects have plastic possibilities" (F. Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 48). In 1924 he collaborated on the film Ballet Méchanique with two Americans, Dudley Murphy, who in 1922 made the film High Speed, and the composer George Antheil. Léger brought the techniques of the close-up, fragmentation and montage that he learned in this project to his painting, and continued to demonstrate the influence of the qualities of precision, clarity and harmony that he admired in Purist paintings earlier in the decade. Incongruous objects and abstract forms might appear simultaneously within the invented architectural space of the composition. It did not matter that these elements bore no relationship to each other, for there was no narrative. "The object by itself is capable of becoming something absolute, moving and dramatic" (ibid., p. 65).
A simple child's toy, a spinning-top, was rendered and included as one of the objects in five paintings done in 1929: the present work, and Bauquier nos. 629, 670, 635 and 637. The latter represents a reprise of the present composition in a larger format (sale, Christie's, New York, 11 May 1988, lot 53).
A simple child's toy, a spinning-top, was rendered and included as one of the objects in five paintings done in 1929: the present work, and Bauquier nos. 629, 670, 635 and 637. The latter represents a reprise of the present composition in a larger format (sale, Christie's, New York, 11 May 1988, lot 53).