The album "Circus" 1950

Fernand Léger made this colour print for his album "Circus" with who-knows-what kind of tools and materials. It’s not about a perfect finish, it's about the process! Look at the contrast between the flat shapes and the clean lines, the heavy black versus the lighter colours. Léger isn’t trying to trick you into thinking this is real, it's about making a world, not copying one. The colours are giving me a kind of joyful, slightly off-kilter feeling. Like when you go to the circus as a child, everything is slightly weird but fun. My eye keeps going back to the pair of legs sticking up on the left side of the image. The way the shapes fit together, and push against each other reminds me of Picasso, how he used to find ways to show you multiple sides of something at once. Both artists were interested in stripping things down to their basic shapes, like a machine made of people.