The Bunch of turnips 1951

Fernand Léger made The Bunch of Turnips, an oil on canvas, sometime in his career. It's such a playful piece of work. Look at the way he fearlessly uses those bold, primary colors! The strong black lines create a sense of structure. It's like he's building this world piece by piece, color by color. The materiality of this painting is interesting. The paint looks quite flat and smooth. There is very little evidence of brushstrokes, which gives the artwork a hard-edged, almost mechanical feel. But then you notice the subtle variations in the color blocks, and you get a sense of a hand at work. Take the woman’s face; it is constructed with planes of blues, whites, and oranges, giving a very constructed and simplified image of a person. Léger's work reminds me a bit of Stuart Davis, another painter who loved to play with bold colors and geometric shapes. It's like these artists were having a conversation across the decades about what painting could be, embracing the idea that art doesn't need to be a mirror reflecting reality, but a space where we can construct our own visual language.