Leger

Goodness, the Léger exhibit (or Leg-er, as I like to call it in rebellion to the French language) was excellent. I'd heard that it was small, but I found it to be enormous, even overwhelming: I guess it was set up by a post-doc, which is telling--it seems like the exhibit tries to show every group that Leger associated with, every movement or artist that influenced him, ever student who was influenced by him. There were a variety of artistic forms, too--set designs, costume designs, films, advertisements, and paintings. Sculpture and architecture that overlapped with the goals of his work were shown.

It was quite an intense and comprehensive exhibit that was sometimes a bit much: modern art can be aggressive and oppressive, at times, and this exhibit captured that--it seemed like musical compositions from collaborators of Léger's were always attacking you, no matter where you turned. There were loads of films, which were amazing, but they were everywhere! And the films themselves--montages and repetitions of mechanical processes and spinning spirals--were visually assaulting, at times.

All that said I loved the exhibit: it gave an excellent picture of the development of art in France from 1913 to the late 20s. I loved seeing how Piet Mondrian and Le Corbusier interacted with Léger. And I would love to see the whole of the film, L'inhumaine (The Inhuman One), for which Léger made the sets.

The centerpiece of the exhibit came early on--Léger's The City (at the top). It is very flat, the subject matter equally distributed across the breadth of the campus. Many different elements of the modern city are present--the puffs of smoke, the shining of an electric sign, a telegraph pole. This makes sense--painted just post-war, it celebrates the city and its developments. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is the absence of the layers of the history that are so prevalent in the architecture of old cities. What's great about the city is diversity--including the diversity of time. Everything isn't built at one moment, but gradually. Léger's paintings don't have history in them: everything is new; everything is modern; everything is flat.

I didn't really expect typefaces to be so important--there were some covers of magazines that were just modernist plays on fonts. There were lots of letters and numbers in Léger's paintings, too, in interesting fonts.

There was one more quibble I had and that was with the lack of translation. Léger illustrated some books in partnership, but while the words were shown, they weren't translated. Similarly, Sonia Delaunay illustrated a poem by Blaise Cendrars. They were trying to make a point about the connection between art and poetry. However, sadly the poem is untranslated and we're just left with Delaunay's (lovely) painting. Here's the bottom of the very long picture/poem:

I saw this exhibit in the morning; in the evening, we went to the First Friday gathering in Center City. The First Friday was great--there are loads of art galleries open, and the artists are sometimes there with their work. Some of the work is by local artists; others by international artists. There was a great pottery gallery. And a lovely book store/antique store/print shop, which is the perfect combination, as far as I'm concerned. I'm determined to return as soon as possible. Plus, after dinner, we visited the Franklin Fountain for dessert--it's an old-time ice cream shop in a lovely building.