The rider acrobat juggler 1921

Fernand Léger made this painting called The Rider Acrobat Juggler using paint with thin washes of colour. It feels like an echo from a time when artists were first starting to play with abstraction. I imagine Léger in his studio, simplifying forms into these bold shapes. What's on his mind? Is he thinking about the precision of machines? Or perhaps the rawness of folk art? The colours have a wonderful flatness. This big blue shape could be a body, and the red and yellow rectangles, an outfit. Then the face is so sketchy, like a child’s drawing. It reminds me that painting doesn't always need to be slick or polished. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is embrace the raw, the awkward, the unfinished. Leger is part of this conversation that extends from Picasso through to Elizabeth Murray and beyond. Each artist riffing off the last, mixing it up, making something new.