New York good-bye 1946

Fernand Léger made this painting titled 'New York good-bye', with oil on canvas. You can see the artist is using a high-key palette of primary colours with a full, even application of paint. Look closely, and you can see the picture plane seems to be split up into shapes, with black lines demarcating color fields in the manner of stained glass. There’s very little attempt to create any illusion of depth. Instead, the composition emphasizes a flat, geometric order. Léger wants us to focus on what it is, not what it represents. See how the word ‘Adieu’ is written in white letters, curling along a dark ribbon? It is a very stylized way of saying ‘farewell’. His forms recall those of Picasso, and also the more decorative, graphic approach of someone like Stuart Davis. Both of them are artists who understood that the true subject of art is other art. In the end, this painting is an object of many layers which invites multiple interpretations.