Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
One of the happiest aspects of the work of charities involved with the art world is the participation of volunteers. Take, for example, the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Founded in 1997 as a result of the Treasure Act 1996, it invites members of the public to report archaeological discoveries to one of forty local Finds Liaison Officers. The scheme could not function without the teams of trained volunteers who record the finds. Such work, which is of national importance, is not exceptional.
To look at Fernand Léger’s late painting Leisure – Homage to Louis David (Fig.1), in the last room of this exhibition at Tate Liverpool, is to become engulfed in wave after wave of pleasure in the simple force and gentle joy of this painting. Difficult to pigeon-hole, Léger has always been rather awkwardly co-opted into various art-historical narratives of painting in the twentieth century – but it seems possible, looking at Leisure, that Léger is underrated as a conceptual painter.
