The album "Circus" 1950

Fernand Léger made this print, Circus, at an unknown date using lithography. Look at how Léger uses shape and color, it’s a real balancing act. There's that bold purple splash in the background, kinda like a stage curtain, setting off those yellow legs and the stark white of the reaching hands. The lines are so decisive, almost like cutting shapes out of paper. You get the sense that Léger wasn't trying to hide the process, or get all fussy with details. That target-like shape at the top, it's so precisely rendered, it almost feels mechanical, but then you see the playful, almost cartoonish figures, like the dove, and it's like, wait a minute, is this serious or not? It's this back and forth that keeps your eye moving. Léger's work is not a million miles away from Picasso, with that cubist interest in shapes, but it’s less tormented somehow. More like cheerful machines. And in the end, isn’t art just a big, beautiful experiment, always asking questions, never really settling on one answer?