Geometric standards 1913

Curator: This is Fernand Léger's "Geometric Standards," painted in 1913. What's your immediate response to it? Editor: It’s dynamic! The colors are striking, but I'm drawn to how the simple geometric shapes – these ovals and partial circles – seem to be jostling for space. There’s almost a raw, unfinished quality to it, despite the clear structure. Curator: It's tempting to see these basic forms as representative of an emerging machine age. These simplified shapes, repeated and overlapped, they do signal a shift away from naturalistic representation, don't they? It's a cultural shorthand for something new, something mechanical, entering human life. Editor: And I’d add to that observation by pointing to the materials! Léger’s visible brushstrokes and the thinness of the paint layer contribute to that rawness. There's an almost industrial simplicity even in his technique. What sort of labor and social processes were accessible at that time which lent itself to the abstraction we see here? Curator: The standardization of parts, the mechanization of labor… These shapes might mimic mass-produced components but at the same time push beyond pure replication, as the colours shift and there's visible human activity within it. In that context, do you see that visual symbolism echoing older, classical ideas? Editor: Possibly. Although it's an exciting rupture of conventions in terms of his palette and shape, I suspect the real innovation, and indeed Léger's labor, exists at the conceptual level: at seeing how simple components can be organized into this complex assemblage of basic materials! The challenge becomes making that process legible to the viewer. Curator: It also reveals that Léger was thinking deeply about how we visually perceive new forms, and how we construct shared symbolic language. Editor: Indeed. So this artwork has revealed the building blocks, so to speak, both of modern making and a visual rhetoric for discussing these transformations. Curator: Fascinating! I find my perspective changed. Editor: Me too.