The Mirror 1925

Fernand Léger made this painting, called 'The Mirror,' with oil on canvas, but I can't tell you exactly when. It’s a very geometric painting, constructed with large color planes in orange, black, and yellow. You have to imagine Léger making this picture, shifting things around. It's like he's asking, "How can you be representational and abstract at the same time?" I love the way the colors are laid down so cleanly, like industrial design or something. The paint is flat and smooth, but the forms suggest volume. Look at how the black shape of the figure is set off against the orange shape of the container. What is a container, anyway? Is the figure the contents? I imagine Léger wondering the same thing as he worked. Artists are always talking to each other through their paintings, across time. Léger was interested in machines, and maybe he thought about how the body relates to machines—both are objects, both are alive in different ways. Painting is the tool to consider those ambiguities and the uncertainty of what we see.