Projet de décor pour la création du Monde 

Fernand Léger’s “Projet de décor pour la création du Monde” is a gouache on paper from the early 20th century. Léger used bold colours and simplified forms. Here, the visual language of early modernism is at play; a world reduced to geometric shapes, and strong, flat colours like blue, yellow, and brown. The imagery suggests something primal, a sense of figures emerging out of the darkness of a newly formed world. Léger was interested in the aesthetics of machinery, and he’s using that sensibility here, but applying it to an ancient subject matter. He made the design for the set of a ballet called “La Création du Monde”. Léger clearly relished the flatness of the gouache, and its capacity to evoke an industrial aesthetic. But ultimately, this work is about the age-old artistic pursuit of rendering the world visible. It reminds us that even the most apparently abstract design has roots in material practice and social vision.