Formal analysis: methods and applications

Leger City

An Analysis of Fernand Leger's the City (1919)

Description:

In the early 20th century, American and European painters alike were understandably transfixed by the effects of modernity and industrialization on the human condition. French painter Fernand Leger was a significant figure among them, with many of his works standing as uniquely representative of this impulse. In works such as 1919's the City, the abstract painter would depict the cluttered, asymmetrical and chromatically hard features of the evolving urban landscape. The City appears as a horizontal gallery of densely packed and irregular geometric shapes, dominated by an off-white backdrop and cut-through by sharp reds, blues and violets.

Fine or Popular Art:

By its intent, the Leger work is inherently Fine Art. The painter would produce his works using the philosophical pretenses of many of the more academic traditions preceding him. According to Horsley (1998), Leger was highly conscious of the non-commercial influences that gave way to his work. Here, Horsley quotes a critic who observes that "Leger's interests encompassed a dizzying variety of early-20th-century-isms: Fauvism, Orphism, Futurism, Purism, Neo-Classicism and Neo-Plasticism."

Function:

This Fine Art tag is only further cemented by the function of the work, which is as a critical assessment of the impact of modernity and industrialization on man's experience. In this, it accomplishes the twin goals of reflecting in horror and in marvel of man's accomplishments. In this way, Leger suggests both an alienation of man and an evolution by which he becomes a symbiotic part of this mechanistic way of life. The garish coloring, reflective of the sharp primaries found in modern architecture and commercially driven urban locations, is neither disturbing nor comforting, suggesting the painter's relative objectivity on his subject matter.

Formal Elements:

As to its formal elements, one of the most compelling and distinguishing aspects of the Leger work is its volume. Even as a hodge-podge of geometrical shapes spans the canvas without any illusion of dimensionality, the manner in which the painter has layered these shapes does given the impression of a clustered downtown area. Its depth is self-apparent by the sharp and definite lines separating objects as well as the manner in which certain objects appear almost to lurk or peek out from the background. The oil on canvas work, originally displayed at 91 x 117 1/2 inches and currently viewable in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, proposes enormity in its landscape, its depth and its height.

Content:

As to the height especially, we are moved to think of pillars and skyscrapers. Leger toys with the iconography of evolving urban life. Scaffolding, commercial type-set, bits of road, telephone wires and bolts of electricity are all implied in the strangely organized jumble of objects.