Léger was fascinated by modernity, especially the changes in human sensibility brought about by the machine age. In explaining how increased speed of travel has impacted our way of seeing, Léger observed: “If pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has necessitated it...the thing that is imagined is less fixed, the object exposes itself less than it did formerly. When one crosses a landscape by automobile or express train, it becomes fragmented; it loses its descriptive value but gains in synthetic value.”