La Petite parade 1953

Fernand Léger made this painting of a small parade with oil on canvas. There is something deeply playful in the way Léger sets up this simple scene with distinct outlines, almost like cut-outs, and flat areas of primary colors against a light blue background. I can see a clown playing the banjo, and the horse with its rider, but it is really more about the relationships between the flat planes of color. It makes me think of the radical way he and other modernists were looking at everyday life, trying to strip away the artifice of academic painting in order to arrive at a new form of seeing. I wonder if Léger considered how his work might inspire generations of artists to explore the joyful possibilities of painting? I think about how Picasso was in conversation with Matisse, and how, in turn, both of their works were in conversation with Léger’s. That’s the thing about painting, it's an embodied expression which welcomes multiple interpretations and continuously inspires creativity across time.