The Vase

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The Vase

Artist Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955)

Date1927

DimensionsOverall: 19 13/16 x 16 15/16 in. (50.3 x 43.1 cm)

MediumColor Lithograph

ClassificationPrints

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1978.53

Not on View

Label TextFernand Léger returned from World War I with a desire to divest the machine of the destructive image it had acquired. In 1924, he declared that “one can affirm this, a machine or manufactured object can be beautiful.” He employed the idea of the close-up as it had been developed in film, a modern technology Léger revered. In The Vase and related paintings, he focused on a close view of a group of oddly disparate objects. Here, he assembled a machine-made vase viewed in multiple aspects, an old-fashioned furniture leg, a segment of sprocketed film, and other contrasting unidentifiable objects, and embedded them in an abstract geometrical environment. He invests objects and their surroundings with a harmonious monumentality, thus expressing his optimism towards technological progress and the realities of modern life.Exhibition HistoryTMA Recent Acquisitions, Prints, Photographs and Drawings : April 1979. Toledo Museum of Art, European Expressionist and Cubist Works on Paper: 1900-1930, December 2, 2011-March 11, 2012 (University of Toledo Student Exhibition).