L'escale 1913

André Lhote made this oil painting, called L'escale, with a palette of muted pinks, blues, and greens, punctuated by sharp geometric forms. You can imagine him, standing at his easel, brush in hand, figuring out how to capture the essence of this scene, simplifying and abstracting what he saw into a cohesive composition. I feel like Lhote wanted to bring everything into harmony, the women in the foreground, the boats, the bridge in the background – it's all working together, each element informing the other. It is cubism but with a humane touch. The flatness and the rendering of forms create tension, but there is also something comforting in the arrangement. You can see Lhote's interest in the way the cubists were thinking about form, but here, it is softened around the edges with an interest in people and place, that is distinctly his own. Artists, after all, build on the ideas of those who came before, remixing and reinterpreting them in their own way.