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Lot Essay
Created in 1930, Nature morte encapsulates Fernand Léger’s vision of modern life. Against a vivid red ground, interlocking forms in black and white coalesce into the outlines of a bottle and face, but all extraneous detail has been removed. A single green leaf shimmers against the lively arrangement – a recurrent motif for the artist. Oblong shapes, dashed lines, and a golden flourish infuse the composition with a sense of musicality and rhythm. At once architectural and melodic, planar yet dynamic, Nature morte speaks to the energy and rationality of a new world.
Léger first began to focus on the genre of the still life during the mid-1920s, and in these works, he painted quotidian objects such as hats, keys, and bowls of fruit. His use of vibrant tonalities and flat, interconnected shapes is almost decorative, a sense mirrored in the present work’s rhythmic relationship of vertical forms. Around 1927, however, Léger’s strict, tessellated geometries began to loosen. Objects started to float atop neutral grounds and appeared in incongruous and inexplicable juxtapositions. The artist opted to paint with pure pigments and eschewed tonal modelling. Abstract forms began to appear more frequently in this period, and the commingling of the real and the imaginary lent Léger’s paintings a decidedly Surrealist quality.
The present work dates from a fertile period for Léger, during which he sought to reconcile the role of Purism – an artistic movement that promoted the eradication of superfluous detail in favour of pure form – with the increasing influence of cinema on his practice. Léger had long been captivated by the spectacle of objects, a fascination that emerged in the period following the First World War, when stores were overflowing with mass-produced consumer goods. Now, however, he wanted to view them cinematically. His work in avantgarde cinema, which began during the mid-1920s, led him to explore the interplay between objectivity, motion, and perception; for the artist, film and fine art shared similar aims. As Léger observed, ‘The future of cinema, like that of the painted picture, lies in the interest it will confer on objects, on fragments of those objects, or on purely fantastic and imaginative inventions…’ (quoted in J. Freeman, ‘L'Événement d’Objectivité Plastique: Léger’s Shift from the Mechanical to the Figurative, 1926-1933’, in Fernand Léger: The Later Years, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1987, p. 23). Understanding the visual impact of a cinematic close-up, Léger began in the late-1920s to celebrate objects in a similar manner by isolating them against abstract grounds.
Léger aspired to an art rooted in and informed by the modern world. He wanted his paintings to reflect the dynamism of the machine age, and canvases such as Nature morte put forth a new language for a new era. Scholars agree that 1930 was pivotal for Léger’s aesthetic evolution: only a year later, he would articulate his guiding belief that abstract art, in its current incarnation, needed to be ‘more humane’, that is, more oriented towards humanity (quoted in I. Conzen-Meairs, ‘Revolution and Tradition: The Metamorphosis of the Conception of Realism in the Late Works of Fernand Léger’, in exh. cat., ibid., 1987, p. 12). As Léger proclaimed, ‘The time of the often criticised art without real subject (‘l’art pour l’art’) and the art without object (abstract art) seems to be over. We are experiencing a new return to the meaningful subject which the common people can understand’ (ibid.).
Léger first began to focus on the genre of the still life during the mid-1920s, and in these works, he painted quotidian objects such as hats, keys, and bowls of fruit. His use of vibrant tonalities and flat, interconnected shapes is almost decorative, a sense mirrored in the present work’s rhythmic relationship of vertical forms. Around 1927, however, Léger’s strict, tessellated geometries began to loosen. Objects started to float atop neutral grounds and appeared in incongruous and inexplicable juxtapositions. The artist opted to paint with pure pigments and eschewed tonal modelling. Abstract forms began to appear more frequently in this period, and the commingling of the real and the imaginary lent Léger’s paintings a decidedly Surrealist quality.
The present work dates from a fertile period for Léger, during which he sought to reconcile the role of Purism – an artistic movement that promoted the eradication of superfluous detail in favour of pure form – with the increasing influence of cinema on his practice. Léger had long been captivated by the spectacle of objects, a fascination that emerged in the period following the First World War, when stores were overflowing with mass-produced consumer goods. Now, however, he wanted to view them cinematically. His work in avantgarde cinema, which began during the mid-1920s, led him to explore the interplay between objectivity, motion, and perception; for the artist, film and fine art shared similar aims. As Léger observed, ‘The future of cinema, like that of the painted picture, lies in the interest it will confer on objects, on fragments of those objects, or on purely fantastic and imaginative inventions…’ (quoted in J. Freeman, ‘L'Événement d’Objectivité Plastique: Léger’s Shift from the Mechanical to the Figurative, 1926-1933’, in Fernand Léger: The Later Years, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1987, p. 23). Understanding the visual impact of a cinematic close-up, Léger began in the late-1920s to celebrate objects in a similar manner by isolating them against abstract grounds.
Léger aspired to an art rooted in and informed by the modern world. He wanted his paintings to reflect the dynamism of the machine age, and canvases such as Nature morte put forth a new language for a new era. Scholars agree that 1930 was pivotal for Léger’s aesthetic evolution: only a year later, he would articulate his guiding belief that abstract art, in its current incarnation, needed to be ‘more humane’, that is, more oriented towards humanity (quoted in I. Conzen-Meairs, ‘Revolution and Tradition: The Metamorphosis of the Conception of Realism in the Late Works of Fernand Léger’, in exh. cat., ibid., 1987, p. 12). As Léger proclaimed, ‘The time of the often criticised art without real subject (‘l’art pour l’art’) and the art without object (abstract art) seems to be over. We are experiencing a new return to the meaningful subject which the common people can understand’ (ibid.).