The album "Circus" 1950

Fernand Léger made this eye-catching album cover, “Circus,” in France; though the exact date is not known, the bright colors and bold shapes are classic Léger. Léger had a lifelong interest in the circus, and this album cover encapsulates its energy. Red rays, like spotlights, burst from behind the performer, capturing the dynamism of the spectacle. The figure, stylized with a flattened perspective, is archetypal of Léger's focus on modern subjects and the aesthetics of the machine age. His work emerged from a pre-war avant-garde art world, where the public role of art was constantly debated, and the relationship between the aesthetic and the political was closely scrutinized. Léger himself had strong communist sympathies. To understand Léger's place in the history of art, we can look at periodicals and political pamphlets. The archive reveals how Léger made an argument for a new kind of figurative painting, where art, like the circus, could speak directly to a mass audience.