The Breakfast 1921

Fernand Léger made "The Breakfast" with oil on canvas, and there's something really satisfying about the way he's simplified everything into these geometric forms. The colours are pretty subdued - black, white, red, a bit of yellow - and give the scene a mechanical, almost robotic vibe. I can imagine Léger, in his studio, pushing the boundaries of representation, reducing figures and objects to their bare essentials. What’s so amazing about the way the artist approaches a painting like this is they don’t make a distinction between a person and a cup. Everything is just form, which can be quite radical, like a Cubist collage but with softer edges. Notice how the black outline creates these figures? It's kind of like a cartoon but with a serious, intellectual edge. Léger was obviously thinking hard about the relationship between the body, the machine, and the modern world when he made this painting. It's a conversation that continues today, and it helps me in my own work, too.