Breakfast 1921

Fernand Léger made this small painting called Breakfast with watercolor on paper. Looking at it, I imagine him working flat on a table, moving around the paper, building up a system of tonal variations and shapes. The painting contains a strange push and pull between flatness and depth, and the black shapes have the same value as the shadows. It seems like he has carefully considered this composition to create a delicate balance on the page. The forms coalesce into what seems to be a woman in a black top reaching for an object on a table. I can see his earlier cubist period here, a kind of deconstruction of form and then, on top of this, an elegant arrangement in the spirit of Cezanne. It makes me think of the broader conversation between painting and representation, and how abstraction is a way of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world.