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Lot Essay
À diverses occasions, Georges Bauquier - ancien assistant, ami de Fernand Léger et co-fondateur du Musée National Fernand Léger à Biot - soulignera que l’artiste fut à l’origine d’un nouveau langage artistique en rompant avec la tradition des autres courants modernes qui se développaient en Europe. Composition mécanique exécuté en 1918, illustre parfaitement les nouveaux développements et préoccupations artistiques du maître : entre 1914 et 1916, Léger vécut personnellement les horreurs de la guerre, où il fut marqué par le progrès mécanique comme symbole de destruction; de façon contradictoire, à la fin de la guerre, il décida que l’objet mécanique était nécessaire à la construction d’une nouvelle civilisation. Naquirent alors les fondements de la période mécanique (entre 1918 et 1923-24). Pour le peintre, la beauté de l’objet-machine (hélice, moteurs, disques, boulons...) incarne un monde idéal où un ensemble de pièces s’enchevêtrent pour faire fonctionner un mécanisme. Ces nouvelles idées et recherches plastiques seront également développées dans son film Ballet mécanique (1924), et trouveront une résonance dans le cinéma de Charlie Chaplin avec les Temps Modernes (1936).
On several occasions, Georges Bauquier – former assistant and a friend of Fernand Léger and co-founder of the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot – would stress that the artist was at the root of a veritable artistic revolution by breaking with the tradition of the other movements that were growing in Europe. Composition mécanique executed in 1918, is the perfect illustration of the master’s new artistic developments and preoccupations : between 1914 and 1916, Léger personally experienced the horrors of war, where he was profoundly affected by mechanical progress as a symbol of destruction; in stark contrast to this, at the end of the war he decided that mechanical objects were necessary for the construction of a new civilisation. This then led to the development of his mechanical period (between 1918 and 1923-24). For the painter, the beauty of mechanical objects (propellers, engines, disks, bolts, etc.) embodied an ideal world in which a set of parts was fitted together to allow a mechanism to work. These avant-garde explorations would then be developed in his film Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet) (1924) later echoed in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times (1936).
On several occasions, Georges Bauquier – former assistant and a friend of Fernand Léger and co-founder of the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot – would stress that the artist was at the root of a veritable artistic revolution by breaking with the tradition of the other movements that were growing in Europe. Composition mécanique executed in 1918, is the perfect illustration of the master’s new artistic developments and preoccupations : between 1914 and 1916, Léger personally experienced the horrors of war, where he was profoundly affected by mechanical progress as a symbol of destruction; in stark contrast to this, at the end of the war he decided that mechanical objects were necessary for the construction of a new civilisation. This then led to the development of his mechanical period (between 1918 and 1923-24). For the painter, the beauty of mechanical objects (propellers, engines, disks, bolts, etc.) embodied an ideal world in which a set of parts was fitted together to allow a mechanism to work. These avant-garde explorations would then be developed in his film Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet) (1924) later echoed in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times (1936).