I myself have employed the close-up, which is the cinema's only real invention. The fragment of the object has also been of use to me; by isolating i… - Fernand Léger

..a yellow square, a red and blue avenue, an Eiffel tower with a camouflaged silhouette.. ..that would all be lit up at night, instead of fireworks. [a proposal to Trotsky of a 'polychrome Moscow', for the 1937 exhibition].

The compression of the modern picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms.. .It is certain that the evolution of the means of locomotion and their speed have a great deal to do with the new way of seeing. Many superficial people raise the cry 'anarchy' in front of these pictures because they cannot follow the whole evolution of contemporary life that painting records.

An example: if I compose a picture using as objects a scrap of bark, a scrap of butterfly wing and a purely imaginary form, you probably won't recognise the bark, or the butterfly wing, and you'll say: 'What does this stand for? It is an abstract picture. No it's a representational picture'.. .There is no such thing as 'abstract', or 'concrete' either. There is a good picture and a bad picture. There is the picture that moves you and the picture that leaves you cold.. .A picture has a value in itself, like a musical score, like a poem.