La moissonneuse 

Curator: Fernand Léger's "La Moissonneuse"—that's "The Harvester" if my French is correct—presents us with quite a vibrant puzzle. It appears to be executed with mixed media and although it's not definitively dated, its style has hallmarks of Cubism and Futurism. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Chaotic, but intriguingly so! My eyes jump all over the place trying to piece together what’s what, kind of like navigating a city blindfolded. All these geometric forms, crisscrossing lines… it feels like a deconstruction of… something. Is it a cityscape, or maybe a machine? Curator: Léger often blurred those lines, embracing the machine age with a fervour some found alarming and others inspiring. The title suggests agricultural labour, but the imagery, the bright primary colours... the hard, sharp angles – they depict something less about rural romanticism and more about mechanical efficiency and modernity transforming the landscape and how it affects those that lived from the land. It has something in common with the art of Diego Rivera if he painted landscapes and not proletarian gatherings in city environments. Editor: Exactly. Even though the visual objects point towards the agricultural domain, they carry a very symbolic emotional and psychological weight here. The wheel shape for example suggests labour or the cycle of seasons. It makes you think about the way memory connects with a continuous reality. Curator: Precisely! Léger, deeply affected by his experiences in World War I, saw beauty in the mechanical, viewing it as a source of both progress and potential alienation. Perhaps it's a visual echo of the artist himself, shattered by war but striving to reassemble, rebuild, like a nation piecing itself together post-conflict. Or a harvest becoming soulless. Editor: Perhaps this visual confusion it is the entire point of it. After all Léger witnessed society changing in profound ways and was possibly questioning everything he thought he knew. If you don't know the answer it makes perfect sense to represent this questioning visually with chaos. Curator: So it is then, with its vibrant dissonance, it compels us to ask ourselves what aspects of our rapidly changing world still make us hopeful – or give us pause. Editor: A potent visual echo indeed!