Composition in yellow bottle 

Fernand Léger made this small painting, Composition in Yellow Bottle, with oil on canvas. Though undated, it likely comes from the period in which he began exhibiting with the Cubists in Paris. Léger was interested in the way that everyday objects and the modern industrial world could be represented through abstraction. The interplay of strong colors, the emphasis on geometric forms, and the rejection of traditional perspective are all hallmarks of Cubism. Yet Léger maintained a focus on recognizable objects, such as the yellow bottle, which grounds the painting in the everyday. In a rapidly industrializing world, Léger’s art represents the changing social landscape and the place of the artist within it. To more fully understand Léger’s work, one might research the exhibition history of the Parisian avant-garde and the ways in which Cubism sought to redefine the role of art in modern life. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.