Essays, written between 1920 and 1953, by an influential, modern painter on the purpose of art in modern life. 

Publishers' note
Preface / George L. K. Morris
Introduction / Edward F. Fry
Chronology
The origins of painting and its representational value (1913)
Contemporary achievements in painting (1914)
A critical essay on the plastic quality of Abel Gance's film The Wheel (1922)
Notes on contemporary plastic life (1923)
Notes on the mechanical element (1923)
The spectacle : light, color, moving image, object-spectacle (1924)
Ballet Mécanique (c. 1924)
The machine aesthetic : the manufactured object, the artisan, and the artist (1924)
The machine aesthetic : geometric order and truth (1925)
The ballet-spectacle, the object-spectacle (1925)
Popular dance halls (1925)
The street : objects, spectacles (1928)
Abstract art (1931)
New York (1931)
The wall, the architect, the painter (1933)
Speaking of cinema (1933)
The new realism (1935)
The new realism goes on (1937)
Color in the world (1938)
The human body considered as an object (1945)
The painter's eye (1946)
Art and the people (1946)
Modern architecture and color (1946)
How I conceive of the figure (1949)
A new space in architecture (1949)
Mural painting and easel painting (1950)
The problem of freedom in art (1950)
Modern painting (1950)
The circus (1950)
Mural painting (1952)
New conceptions of space (1952)
Color in architecture (1954)
The Spartakiades (1960)
A bibliographical guide to Léger / Bernard Karpel.