.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Painted in 1943, Fernand Léger’s Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique captures the confrontation between nature and humanity, which had been a guiding theme of the artist’s practice for years. Against a white ground, Léger has painted leafy vegetation, twisting vines, and barren branches. In the centre, the titular mechanical element emerges, part vortex, part blade. With saturated pigments, Léger united these compositional forms within the flat and spatially ambiguous picture plane, their irregular outline at odds with the rectangular format of the canvas, the dense arrangement defined by its striking graphic geometries. Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique has been included in several exhibitions dedicated to Léger’s work at institutions including the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
With its vibrant and energetic palette, Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique showcases Léger’s preoccupation with colour during this period of his career. The paintings created through these years were replete with bright-coloured objects outlined in thick black. For the artist, colour and geometry defined one another, a sense particularly evident in the verdant greenery of the present work. The black, calligraphic marks add depth to the planar forms, together producing the shape of a hedge, a stem. ‘Colour is a human need like water and fire,’ Léger explained in an article written in 1946. ‘It is a raw material indispensable to life. In every period of his existence and history, man has associated it with his joys, his acts, and pleasures’ (quoted in E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 149).
Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique was painted while Léger was living in the United States, the onset of the Second World War having forced him to emigrate; he arrived in New York on 10 November 1940. This would be his fourth and last trip to the country, having spent several months there during the previous decade. Like other artists living in exile, Léger divided his time between his studio in New York and exploring the United States, and it was during the summer of 1943 that he decided to rent a farm in Rousses Point, a small village near Lake Champlain. Ever interested in the contrast between the natural and the artificial, he found himself intrigued by the visual juxtaposition of skeletal farm machinery discarded in nearby fields. ‘I painted,’ he reminisced, ‘…a group of American landscapes… inspired by the contrast presented by an abandoned machine – become old scrap iron – and the vegetation which devours it. Nature eats it. It has disappeared, under the weeds and wild flowers. The opposition between this pile of twisted metal and the marguerites which decorate it produces a vivid charm’ (quoted in C. Lanchner, ed., Fernand Léger, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p. 235).
Such ‘devouring’ is evident in Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique as the plants threaten to overwhelm the turbines. Following his return to France in 1946, Léger would begin to depict the natural world with more frequency, and themes of growth and neglect, seen in the present work, would continue to shape his canvases. Beyond temporal questions, the collection of seemingly disparate elements in Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique also recalls the practice of photomontage in which commonplace objects are brought together. Here, however, Léger elected to create montage in paint. Despite his two-dimensional medium, Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique nevertheless suggests a sense of depth, and this is particularly the case in the painting’s so-called mechanical element, where the turbine seems almost solid. Although static within the painting itself, the turbine’s quest for perpetual movement evokes a rhythmic dynamism that continued to captivate the artist endlessly.
With its vibrant and energetic palette, Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique showcases Léger’s preoccupation with colour during this period of his career. The paintings created through these years were replete with bright-coloured objects outlined in thick black. For the artist, colour and geometry defined one another, a sense particularly evident in the verdant greenery of the present work. The black, calligraphic marks add depth to the planar forms, together producing the shape of a hedge, a stem. ‘Colour is a human need like water and fire,’ Léger explained in an article written in 1946. ‘It is a raw material indispensable to life. In every period of his existence and history, man has associated it with his joys, his acts, and pleasures’ (quoted in E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 149).
Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique was painted while Léger was living in the United States, the onset of the Second World War having forced him to emigrate; he arrived in New York on 10 November 1940. This would be his fourth and last trip to the country, having spent several months there during the previous decade. Like other artists living in exile, Léger divided his time between his studio in New York and exploring the United States, and it was during the summer of 1943 that he decided to rent a farm in Rousses Point, a small village near Lake Champlain. Ever interested in the contrast between the natural and the artificial, he found himself intrigued by the visual juxtaposition of skeletal farm machinery discarded in nearby fields. ‘I painted,’ he reminisced, ‘…a group of American landscapes… inspired by the contrast presented by an abandoned machine – become old scrap iron – and the vegetation which devours it. Nature eats it. It has disappeared, under the weeds and wild flowers. The opposition between this pile of twisted metal and the marguerites which decorate it produces a vivid charm’ (quoted in C. Lanchner, ed., Fernand Léger, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p. 235).
Such ‘devouring’ is evident in Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique as the plants threaten to overwhelm the turbines. Following his return to France in 1946, Léger would begin to depict the natural world with more frequency, and themes of growth and neglect, seen in the present work, would continue to shape his canvases. Beyond temporal questions, the collection of seemingly disparate elements in Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique also recalls the practice of photomontage in which commonplace objects are brought together. Here, however, Léger elected to create montage in paint. Despite his two-dimensional medium, Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique nevertheless suggests a sense of depth, and this is particularly the case in the painting’s so-called mechanical element, where the turbine seems almost solid. Although static within the painting itself, the turbine’s quest for perpetual movement evokes a rhythmic dynamism that continued to captivate the artist endlessly.