Fernand LĂ©ger and the Rise of the Man-Machine
A major retrospective of the French artist's work at the Centre Pompidou-Metz highlights how he anticipated the accelerating mechanization of human life.
METZ, France â A highlight of the current European cultural season offers a startling reflection of how artificial intelligence is transforming work and workers: the retrospective of the pugnacious French painter and filmmaker Fernand LĂ©ger at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. What particularly interests me here is how LĂ©gerâs early, mechano-morphic imagery enters the oily slipstream of man-machines, thus acting as a harbinger of cyberpunk and contemporary biomechatronic culture, where distinctions between the body and the work environment blur in the density of speeding networks.
Early in life, LĂ©ger embraced a transcendent, quasi-Futurist love of technological energy along with the Cubist notion of putting the squeeze on: fracturing objects into sharp geometric shapes. But soon, his brand of Cubism evolved into an automaton-esque figurative style distinguished by his focus on cylindrical forms. These cylindrical android figures express a synchronization between human and machine that is most relevant today given the coming artificial intelligence workplace. When we look at LĂ©ger with new eyes, we see that he sought to express the noise, dynamism, and speed of the new technology machinery in which he and we find ourselves immersed.
In 1909, LĂ©ger moved to Montparnasse, where he worked as an architectural draftsman and became active in Section DâOr, the group of avant-garde artists who held regular meetings at the home of the Duchamp brothers; including Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Duchamp-Villon. LĂ©gerâs early Cubist works are full of astonishing, automated, compulsive, and practically cinematic stutter effects; a clear example of this is the still life âLe Compotier sur la Tableâ (1909). The effects become more intricate in âContraste de formsâ (1913), part of his Contrasts of Forms series (1912â14), which embraces a vigorous vocabulary of mingled cones, cylinders, cubes, and planes that have been loosely scrubbed with color, lending the work a feeling of anxious transiency. They appear to be riffing off of his âLes Toits de Parisâ (âThe Roofs of Paris,â 1912), a loosely brushed painting that has the relaxed touch of Henri Matisse.
It is generally held that by increasingly rounding off the Cubistsâ sharp edges, LĂ©ger became more of a Tubist, an evolution sparked because, in his World War I army days (when he was almost lethally mustard gassed), he had been inspired by ogling the silver barrel of a gun gleaming in the sun. During his military service, he created many sketches of artillery, soldiers, and airplanes, leading to his subsequent âmechanical period,â in which he painted tubular, machine-like forms. Hustling cool metal cylinders certainly dominate his first post-WWI paintings. Preparing the way for these Tubist wonders was one of the best paintings LĂ©ger ever made: his rich, velvety textured composition âLa Noceâ (âThe Wedding,â 1911â12). It is so jam packed with Cubist crunchy incident that it is difficult to decipher at first glance. Like a fine, nuanced, and balanced wine, this painting exhibits intensity without heaviness. The eye is drawn to the full rhythmic structure of the kaleidoscopic space where smaller, interlocking elements lure it into deep, opulent repetitions of machinic (and implicitly sexual) acts. The paintingâs couple fuses into gyrating, repeating forms in a complex and cryptic way, lending the work a vivacious and sleek visual texture that is delightfully seductive. The couple and multitude breed into a repetitive orgy-machine, pulling the mind into an infinite mechanical logic that is almost transcendental.
The military theme in LĂ©gerâs oeuvre remains prominent in post-WWI paintings like âLa partie de cartesâ (âThe Card Game,â 1917), where three decorated soldiers tumble out of themselves and ripple across the picture plane, merging into an ecstatic mĂ©nage Ă trois through the interlacing repetitions of their machine forms. This post-flesh, man-machine unanimity could be seen as a precedent, suggestive of our current post-human condition. The resplendent mĂ©lange of seated tin men â all evocative of that famous one from Oz â displays a frantic, cybernetic logic in terms of the paintingâs visual tactility, with once lumpen and deadlocked male forms set flowing in jerks and spasms across the surface. The artist has systematically imposed on them a vibrating restlessness through labyrinthine extensions and doublings, making their flesh undergo steps of annihilation into transubstantiation. The compositionâs flickering, staccato repetitions create the impression of a rolling bacchanalia where human forms transcend their fleshiness and extend themselves through motorized re-embodiment. LĂ©ger seems to suggest that the truth of life is found not through chance, as one might glean from the card game, but through the technological apparatus of bodies tumbling into a field of circuits. Likewise, in âLe Cirque Medranoâ (1918), exuberant performing figures are put through LĂ©gerâs mechanical meat grinder and expelled into the hyperreal dominion of entertainment simulacrum.
In the same year that LĂ©ger painted the proto-Pop âLe Cirque Medrano,â he also dabbled in abstraction with his non-figurative works âLe Disqueâ (âThe Disk,â 1918) and âLes helicesâ (âThe Blades,â 1918), which in turn prefigured âElĂ©ment mĂ©caniqueâ (âMechanical Elementâ) of 1924. In these paintings, LĂ©ger rendered uninhabited, post-Cubist machine-scapes crammed with repetitions, combinations, and permutations. Particularly in âElĂ©ment mĂ©canique,â he pushes low-key color values through a chiaroscuro enhancer that punches the paintingâs surface into high contrast. In the more subdued âLes helices,â LĂ©ger constructs a semi-coherent composition out of wildly diverse elements by vertically stacking shapes into wobbly rows, thus making visible the process of building a picture as if it was a city. He borrowed such avant-garde, machinist elements not only from Cubism, but also from Dada and Futurism. For example, the typographical dismembering brought into fashion by the Futuristsâ Parole in LibertĂ is evident in LĂ©gerâs poster âLâInhumaineâ (1924), which he made for the avant-garde film of the same name by cinema theorist Michel LâHerbier. Though LĂ©ger worked in a variety of media besides painting and the graphic arts â including drawing, ceramic, film, set design for theater and dance, glass, print, and book arts â his style rarely varied, clinging to a visual clout that favored primary colors loosely distributed through stuttering patterns that consume or frame bold forms.
LĂ©ger, though not himself a Dadaist, made much of the machine, but little of sex farce. He did not mock the machine the way Marcel Duchamp did with his onastic âChocolate Grinder (No. 1)â (1913) or in the numerous psychosexual examples from Francis Picabiaâs machinist period. It is not surprising that Picabia was also a member of the Section dâOr group, and, like LĂ©ger, distributed disparate body parts and mechanical elements in what seems at first a turbulent, haphazard fashion. But in Picabiaâs case, there is a blending of the machinist aesthetic with representations of the human body that suggests the travesty of the sex machine avant la lettre. In sardonic Dada, there is a challenging mix of affirmation and critique of the fusion of man and machine; with LĂ©ger, it is predominantly affirmation, enhanced by his populist attitude to art. LĂ©ger strove to be as simple and direct as possible in his later art, so as to be accessible. This extends to his pedagogic ambition to educate the eyes of the public through the free art school he founded in Paris with AmĂ©dĂ©e Ozenfant.
Still, LĂ©ger is complex enough in his subject matter to challenge the humanist conceptions of âman.â This is most evident in the mustachioed âLe mĂ©canicienâ (âThe Mechanic,â 1918) and in âLâHomme Ă la pipeâ (âMan with the Pipe,â 1920), with their tin man-like volumes. They both project a tightly structured machismo air and thus have much less charm than âLa Noce,â which has a nonchalant, silky, falling feel to it. Yet in these two later robotic tour de forceworks, LĂ©ger clearly sets up tensions between the human narrative and the mechanical spectacle. In the canvas âLâHomme Ă la pipeâ (one of three versions he painted of this theme in the same year), a visual contest has been set up between man and the machine environment around him, which man has mastered by becoming robot. In âLe mĂ©canicien,â the four-fingered, mustachioed metal manâs phallic arms and shoulders invite mockery. In these canvases, and with âComposition Ă la main et aux chapeauxâ (1927), I became less interested in LĂ©gerâs paintings as they seemed to prefigure the use of the simulacral culture of advertising typical of Pop Art. Rather, I prefer LĂ©gerâs work when it points at neurocomputing wetware, biorobotics, and AI-charged automation; when it hums away in the space between the mechanic and the organic. This is when LĂ©ger functions as a mythic oracle of our times.
But the greatest construct of tipsy automation â and, I think, LĂ©gerâs paramount work â is the flicker-film âLe Ballet MĂ©caniqueâ (1924) that he co-directed with the American filmmaker Dudley Murphy. It features Kiki de Montparnasse fluctuating between figuration and abstraction. It is a Dada masterpiece of early experimental film, stringing together a reeling mechanic-mental river of sensations both flashy and frustratingly repetitive. The film is a bid at eliminating our sense of linear time, and it always gives me the fantastic feeling of prolonging action into an almost erotic eternity through repetition. After the initial dazzling, âLe Ballet MĂ©caniqueâ â much of which was shot by Man Ray â smartly transmits an altered, exalted, and orgasmic state of mind that is perfectly matched by George Antheilâs noise music soundtrack, the 30-minute-long âLe Ballet MĂ©caniqueâ (1924). This pummeling composition was originally conceived as the musical accompaniment to the 15-minute film, but due to their differences, eventually the filmmakers and composer chose to let their creations evolve separately (although the film credits always included Antheil). Nevertheless, Antheilâs âLe Ballet MĂ©caniqueâ premiered as concert music in Paris in 1926 and is majestic in and of itself. When included in the film (as here), everything is infused with a pulsating and flickering go-stop-go-stop-go-stop-go energy, evoking a hyperactive current of industrial forces on the body.
Like LĂ©gerâs early paintings, the film is flush with discontinuous, fragmented, and kaleidoscopic sensations. The screen pulsates with the hot energies of modern life and its dull repetitions, animating the screen with an insistent flicker. This stutter-and-flicker effect is something that Brion Gysin picked up again in his âDreamachineâ (1961) and we find it too in the works of Tony Conrad and Paul Sharits. âLe Ballet MĂ©caniqueâ is a stunning, spasmodic display of looped concentration, where relationships between the protoplasmic body and mechanical cycles invite meditation on self-prosthesis. In this flickering ballet, the human body at the center of traditional narrative subjectivity is undone by a visual noise it cannot contain.
The filmâs level of energetic brilliance proved unsustainable for LĂ©ger. In his âComposition aux trois figuresâ (1932), three robotic figures symbolizing the three graces are unconvincingly feminized. These stiff, ashen, sculptural forms have a slight appeal, but are less interesting than his earlier figures, which were consumed within perverse, post-Cubist fields of fractured displacement. Later, in 1945, after years of great success inside and outside of the United States, including mural commissions for the Worldâs Fairs of 1925 and 1937 (the year his Nicolas Schöffler-esque cybernetic sculpture project to camouflage the Eiffel Tower was rejected), LĂ©ger joined the Communist Party in France. During the subsequent period his work became even less flickering, less abstract, and less interesting; taking up as subject the clichĂ© of the monumental, heroic worker of Soviet socialist realism. Look at his prosaic painting âLes constructeursâ (1950), which riffs off a photograph of Soviet workers that he clipped from a propaganda publication; it is actually surprising that the Soviets denied him a visa to visit with them.
Like in a good deal of the later work one encounters at the artistâs former studio â now the MusĂ©e National Fernand LĂ©ger at Biot on the CĂŽte dâAzur â âLes constructeursâ verges on glib schmaltz. The flat clarity of focus on the earnest-but-cartoonish iron workers alerts the insightful viewer to LĂ©gerâs desire to transmit the moral allure he felt for communism. But the paint application is blasĂ© and so the painting profoundly lacks panache. What the soulless rectangle lacks is not a good subject â the working class certainly is â but the once tight fit of energetic bodily engagement and mechanical penetration typical of the modern workplace: that consciousness of a workersâ existence as augmented by (or merged with) technology.
LĂ©gerâs late stylistic mediocrity is a pity, because through his choice of working class subject matter he could have elevated the worker into the realm of Ă©lan, better supporting the proletarian uprisings of the following decades. But the monotonous âLes constructeursâ falters when compared to its thematic predecessor, Gustave Courbetâs âThe Stonebreakersâ (1850), which projected majestic seriousness. By contrast, âLes constructeursâ has a flat, cartoonish feel that makes it hard to find a working class hero worthwhile of our solemn empathy.
Be that as it may, in his most refined flesh-meets-machine works â including âLe Ballet MĂ©canique,â âLa Noce,â and âLa partie de cartesâ â LĂ©ger laid down intricate art that raises thorny questions rich in social-political ambition. Already in these works, heavy human flesh no longer functions as a prerequisite for subjectivity, but rather takes on lĂ©ger (lightweight) aspects typical of the electronic android.
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