Parade Sauvage
Furnishing Fabric
1956 (made)
1956 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
This furnishing fabric, designed by Fernand Léger, was printed a year after the artist's death in 1955.The design re-works elements of Léger's famous painting The Great Parade, executed in 1954 (New York: Guggenheim) and incorporates motifs from Les Trapézistes, 1954 (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia), and a series of lithographs Léger produced entitled Le Cirque. Léger continues his evident fascination with the circus in the design for this fabric: both the vigorous vitality and the spontanaeity of the spectacle come through strongly. Léger's treatment of this subject frequently incorporates an element of the sinister, which can be detected here through the contorted, almost grotesque faces of the performers and the French phrase 'Cette Parade Sauvage', meaning 'this wild/barbaric parade' which appears throughout.
It was this combination of activity and chaos that appealed to Léger, who observed in 1950:
'A circus is a circulation of great masses of people, animals and objects.... Go to the circus. You leave behind your rectangles, your geometric windows, and you go to the country of circles in action.'
It was this combination of activity and chaos that appealed to Léger, who observed in 1950:
'A circus is a circulation of great masses of people, animals and objects.... Go to the circus. You leave behind your rectangles, your geometric windows, and you go to the country of circles in action.'
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Titles |
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| Materials and techniques | Screen-printed cotton |
| Brief description | Furnishing fabric 'Parade Sauvage' of screen-printed cotton, designed by Fernand Léger for Fuller Fabrics, New York, 1956 |
| Physical description | Furnishing fabric of screen-printed cotton. |
| Dimensions |
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| Styles | |
| Credit line | Given by Fuller Fabrics |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | This furnishing fabric, designed by Fernand Léger, was printed a year after the artist's death in 1955.The design re-works elements of Léger's famous painting The Great Parade, executed in 1954 (New York: Guggenheim) and incorporates motifs from Les Trapézistes, 1954 (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia), and a series of lithographs Léger produced entitled Le Cirque. Léger continues his evident fascination with the circus in the design for this fabric: both the vigorous vitality and the spontanaeity of the spectacle come through strongly. Léger's treatment of this subject frequently incorporates an element of the sinister, which can be detected here through the contorted, almost grotesque faces of the performers and the French phrase 'Cette Parade Sauvage', meaning 'this wild/barbaric parade' which appears throughout. It was this combination of activity and chaos that appealed to Léger, who observed in 1950: 'A circus is a circulation of great masses of people, animals and objects.... Go to the circus. You leave behind your rectangles, your geometric windows, and you go to the country of circles in action.' |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | CIRC.439-1956 |
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| Record created | March 8, 2007 |
| Record URL |
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