Chimneys on Rooftops 1911

Fernand Léger made this oil on canvas, Chimneys on Rooftops, with smoky blacks, grays, whites and ochres. I see a city in the process of becoming something else! The paint is thick and heavy in places, like a crust, but elsewhere it is thin and washy, with visible brushstrokes. I wonder if Léger was aiming for that raw, unfinished look? You know, like he’s saying, ‘this is how painting is made, folks!’. Look at the forms themselves, the way the lines are so sure and the shapes lock together. It's like he's taking the world and rebuilding it from scratch, maybe influenced by his contemporaries like Picasso and Braque. Painting is like a conversation between artists that keeps going, and it's so cool to see how they bounce ideas off each other across time. The real heart of painting lies in its open-ended nature, where there’s no single answer or meaning. It's about feeling, questioning, and seeing things in new ways.