Au cycliste 1939

Curator: Ah, look at this piece! This is "Au cycliste", or "To the Cyclist," painted in 1939 by Jean Hélion. It’s oil on canvas. Editor: It's definitely got a mood... almost melancholic, wouldn't you say? That pervasive greyscale makes it feel…drained. What was Hélion working through? Curator: Well, it was right before the start of World War II. I think Hélion's exploration here has to do with examining modern life, the everyday person. See the figure on the bike, the woman at the window... Editor: Absolutely. But those flat planes of color! The way the figures are built from geometric forms, reducing them to pure function in some ways… almost machine-like. Curator: Precisely! There’s that Cubist influence merging with a Surrealist vision. Hélion wasn’t just depicting people; he was after some kind of essence. Maybe this city life makes him uneasy and detached... I feel the absence. Editor: And speaking of that detachment, think about the actual materials here, that oil paint applied so flatly...almost without texture. There’s a kind of manufactured quality, despite the very human figures it displays. Curator: It's so stark. The figures seem compartmentalized and distanced within the overall composition, don't they? It could easily reflect how urbanization impacted communities in general back then. Editor: Makes one ponder the cycle of creation too - oil extracted, refined, applied with brushes probably made in some sweatshop— transformed into this vision… that maybe comments on these very conditions of alienation. Curator: Beautiful, I am now feeling more of a longing that anything else, perhaps even a sort of gentle plea within all the quiet melancholy! Editor: Well, that's an angle I appreciate now. From production line to thoughtful statement, a story of people making stuff, to describe, sometimes beautifully, what's it doing *to* them in turn.