Marc Chagall (, }}; A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian
Toledo", after the former cultural center of the
Spanish Empire. As the city was mostly built of wood, little of it survived three years of Nazi occupation and destruction during World War II.
Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family.
Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, My Life. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Vitebsk itself had been a center of that culture dating from the 1730s with its teachings derived from the Kabbalah. Goodman describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:
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Art education
In Russia at that time Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities due to policies of discrimination. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied
Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13 his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.
, his first art teacher in Vitebsk]]
A turning point in his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white." Chagall would later say how there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally foreign to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it." He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.
He eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical", writes Goodman. The young Chagall explained, "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, a realist artist who also ran a small drawing school in Vitebsk, which included future luminaries as El Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his desires.
Artistic inspirations
Goodman notes that during this period in Russia, Jews had two basic alternatives for joining the art world: One was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots", by moving away from any public expressions of Jewishness, in order to avoid the discrimination endemic in Russian society. The other alternative—the one that Chagall chose—was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into his art. For Chagall, this was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle."
Chagall biographer Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art."
Years later, at the age of 57 while living in America, Chagall confirmed this when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":
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Art career
Russia (1906–1910)
In 1906, he moved to
St. Petersburg which was then the capital of Russia and the center of the country's artistic life with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not permitted into the city without an internal passport, he managed to get a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art school and studied there for two years. By 1907 he had begun painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes.
During 1908 to 1910, Chagall studied under Léon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. While in St. Petersburg he discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin.
France (1910–1914)
In 1910 Chagall moved to Paris to develop his own artistic style. Art historian and curator James Sweeney notes that when Chagall first arrived in Paris, Cubism was the dominant art form and French art was still dominated by the "materialistic outlook of the 19th century." But Chagall arrived from Russia with "a ripe color gift, a fresh, unashamed response to sentiment, a feeling for simple poetry and a sense of humor", he adds. These notions were foreign to Paris at that time, and as a result his first recognition came not from other painters but from poets such as
Blaise Cendrars and
Guillaume Apollinaire. His first days were a hardship for the 23-year-old Chagall, who found himself alone in the big city and unable to speak French. Some days he "felt like fleeing back to Russia, as he daydreamed while he painted, about the riches of Russian folklore, his
Hasidic experiences, his family, and especially Bella.
In Paris he enrolled at La Palette, an art academy where the painters André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught, and also found work at another academy. He would spend his free hours visiting galleries and salons, especially the Louvre, where he would study the works of Rembrandt, the Le Nain brothers, Chardin, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissarro, Matisse, Gauguin, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and others. It was in Paris that he learned the technique of gouache, which he used to paint Russian scenes. He also visited Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, "and was happy just breathing Parisian air."
Baal-Teshuva describes this new phase in Chagall's artistic development:
During his time in Paris Chagall was constantly reminded of his home in Russia, as Paris was also home to many Russian painters, writers, poets, composers, dancers, and other émigre′s. However, "night after night he painted until dawn", only then going to bed for a few hours, and resisted the many temptations of the big city at night. "My homeland exists only in my soul", he once said. He continued painting Jewish motifs and subjects from his memories of Vitebsk, although he included Parisian scenes—the Eiffel Tower in particular, along with portraits. Many of his works were updated versions of paintings he had made in Russia, transposed into Fauvist or Cubist keys.
Chagall developed a whole repertoire of quirky motifs: the ghostly figure floating in the sky, ... the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down. The majority of his scenes of life in Vitebsk were painted while living in Paris, and "in a sense they were dreams", notes Lewis. Their "undertone of yearning and loss", with a detached and abstract appearance, caused Apollinaire to be "struck by this quality", calling them "surnaturel!" His "animal/human hybrids and airborne phantoms" would later become a formative influence on Surrealism. Chagall, however, did not want his work to be associated with any school or movement and considered his own personal language of symbols to be meaningful to himself. But Sweeney notes that others often still associate his work with "illogical and fantastic painting", especially when he uses "curious representational juxtapositions."
Sweeney writes that "This is Chagall's contribution to contemporary art: the reawakening of a poetry of representation, avoiding factual illustration on the one hand, and non-figurative abstractions on the other." André Breton said that "with him alone, the metaphor made its triumphant return to modern painting."
Russia (1914–1922)
Because he missed his fiancée, Bella, who was still in Vitebsk, "He thought about her day and night", writes Baal-Teshuva, and was afraid of losing her. He therefore decided to accept an invitation from a noted art dealer in Berlin to exhibit his work, his intention being to continue on to Russia, marry Bella, and then return with her to Paris. Chagall took 40 canvases and 160 gouaches, watercolors and drawings to be exhibited. The exhibit, held at Herwarth Walden's
Sturm gallery was a huge success, "The German critics positively sang his praises."
After the exhibit, he continued on to Vitebsk, where he planned to stay only long enough to marry Bella. However, after a few weeks, the First World War broke out, closing the Russian border for an indefinite period. A year later he married Bella Rosenfeld and had their first child, Ida. Before the marriage, Chagall had difficulty convincing Bella's parents that he would be a suitable husband for their daughter. They were worried about her marrying a painter from a poor family and wondered how he would support her. Becoming a successful artist now became a goal and inspiration. Hence, despite the ongoing war, Chagall's spirits remained high, mostly due to his marriage. According to Lewis, "[T]he euphoric paintings of this time, which show the young couple floating balloon-like over Vitebsk—its wooden buildings faceted in the Delaunay manner—are the most lighthearted of his career." His wedding pictures were also a subject he would return to in later years as he thought about this period of his life.
The October Revolution of 1917 was a dangerous time for Chagall although it also offered opportunity. By then he was one of the Soviet Union's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, which enjoyed special privileges and prestige as the "aesthetic arm of the revolution." He was offered a notable position as a commissar of visual arts for the country, but preferred something with a lower profile, and instead took a position as commissar of arts for Vitebsk. This resulted in his founding the Vitebsk Arts College which, adds Lewis, became the "most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union."
It obtained for its faculty some of the most important artists in the country, such as El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. He also added his first teacher, Yehuda Pen. Chagall tried to create an atmosphere of a collective or independently minded artists, each with their own unique style. However, this would soon prove to be difficult as a few of the key faculty members preferred a Suprematist art of squares and circles, and looked down on Chagall's attempt at creating "bourgeois individualism" in their teachings. Chagall then resigned as commissar and moved to Moscow.
, 1917]]
In 1915 Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow, first exhibiting his works at a well-known salon and in 1916 exhibiting pictures in St. Petersburg. He again showed his art at a Moscow exhibition of avant-garde artists. This constant exposure caused his name to spread and a number of wealthy collectors began buying his art. He also began illustrating a number of Yiddish books with ink drawings. Chagall had turned 30 and had begun to make a name for himself.
In Moscow he was offered a position as stage designer for the newly formed State Jewish Chamber Theater. It was set to open in early 1921 with a number of plays by Sholem Aleichem. For its opening he created a number of large background murals using techniques he learned from Bakst, his early teacher. One of the key murals was tall by long and included images of various lively subjects such as dancers, fiddlers, acrobats, and farm animals. One critic at the time called it "Hebrew jazz in paint." Chagall created it as a "storehouse of symbols and devices", notes Lewis. The murals "constituted a landmark" in the history of the theatre, and were forerunners of his later large-scale works, including murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Paris Opera.
Life quickly became a hardship for Russians as famine spread after the war ended in 1918. The Chagalls found it necessary to move to a smaller, less expensive, town near Moscow, although he now had to commute to Moscow daily using crowded trains. In Moscow he found a job teaching art to war orphans. After spending the years between 1921 and 1922 living in primitive conditions, he decided to move back to France so that his art could grow in an atmosphere of greater freedom. Numerous other artists, writers, and musicians were also planning to move to the West. He applied for an exit visa and while waiting for its uncertain approval, wrote his autobiography, My Life.
France (1923–1941)
In 1923 Chagall left Moscow to return to France. On his way he stopped in Berlin to recover the many pictures he had left there on exhibit ten years earlier, before the war began, but was unable to find or recover any of them. Nonetheless, after returning to Paris he again "rediscovered the free expansion and fulfilment which were so essential to him", writes Lewis. With all his early works now lost, he began trying to paint from his memories of his earliest years in Vitebsk with sketches and oil paintings.
He formed a business relationship with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. This inspired him to begin creating etchings for a series of illustrated books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, the Bible, and the Fables of La Fontaine. These illustrations would eventually come to represent his finest printmaking efforts. By 1926 he had his first exhibition in the United States at the Reinhardt gallery of New York which included about 100 works, although he did not travel to the opening. He instead stayed in France, "painting ceaselessly", notes Baal-Teshuva. It was not until 1927 that Chagall made his name in the French art world, when art critic and historian Maurice Raynal awarded him a place in his book Modern French Painters. However, Raynal was still at a loss to accurately describe Chagall to his readers:
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During this period he traveled throughout France and fell in love with Côte d'Azur, where he enjoyed the landscapes, colorful vegetation, the blue Mediterranean, and the mild weather. He made repeated trips to the countryside, always taking his sketchbook. His wife Bella had a special role in his life. Wullschlager notes that "she was the living connection to Russia that allowed him to evolve as an artist in exile, in contrast to most Russian artistic emigrés, whose work withered once they left their homeland." He also visited nearby countries and later wrote about the impressions some of those travels left on him:
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The Bible illustrations
After returning to Paris from one of his trips, Vollard commissioned him to illustrate the
Old Testament version of the Bible. Although he could have completed the project in France, he used the assignment as an excuse to travel to Palestine to experience for himself the
Holy Land. He arrived there in February 1931 and ended up staying for two months. Chagall felt at home in Palestine where many spoke Yiddish and Russian. According to Baal-Teshuva, "he was impressed by the pioneering spirit of the people in the
kibbutzim and deeply moved by the
Wailing Wall and the other holy places."
Chagall later told a friend that Palestine gave him "the most vivid impression he had ever received." Wullschlager notes, however, that whereas Delacroix and Matisse had found inspiration in the exoticism of North Africa, he as a Jew in Palestine had different perspective. "What he was really searching for there was not external stimulus but an inner authorization from the land of his ancestors, to plunge into his work on the Bible illustrations." Chagall stated that "In the East I found the Bible and part of my own being."
As a result, he immersed himself in "the history of the Jews, their trials, prophecies, and disasters", notes Wullschlager. She adds that taking on the assignment was an "extraordinary risk" for Chagall, as he had finally made his name in the art world as a leading contemporary painter, but would now pull away from modernist themes and delve into "an ancient past." Between 1931 and 1934 he worked "obsessively" on "The Bible", even going to Amsterdam in order to carefully study the biblical paintings by Rembrandt and El Greco, to see the extremes in religious painting. He walked the streets of the city's Jewish quarter to again feel the earlier atmosphere. He told Franz Meyer:
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Chagall saw the Old Testament as a "human story, ... not with the creation of the cosmos but with the creation of man, and his figures of angels are rhymed or combined with human ones", writes Wullschlager. She points out that in one of his early Bible images, "Abraham and the Three Angels", the angels sit and chat over a glass of wine "as if they have just dropped by for dinner."
He returned to France and by the following year had completed 32 out of the total of 105 plates. By 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, he had finished 66. However, Vollard died that same year. When the series was completed in 1956, it was published by Edition Tériade. Baal-Teshuva writes that "the illustrations were stunning and met with great acclaim. "Once again Chagall had shown himself to be one of the 20th century's most important graphic artists." Leymarie has described these drawings by Chagall as "monumental" and,
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Nazi campaigns against modern art
Not long after Chagall began his work on the
Bible,
Adolf Hitler came to power in Berlin. Anti-Semitic laws were being introduced and the first concentration camp at
Dachau had opened. Wullschlager describes the early effects on the art world:
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Beginning in 1937 around twenty thousand works from German museums were confiscated as "degenerate" by a committee headed by Joseph Goebbels." Although the German press had once "swooned over him", the new German leadership now made a mockery of Chagall's art, describing them as "green, purple, and red Jews shooting out of the earth, fiddling on violins, flying through the air ... representing [an] assault on Western civilization."."
After Germany invaded and occupied France, the Chagalls naively remained in
Vichy France, unaware that French Jews, with the help of the
Vichy government, were being collected and sent to German concentration camps, from which nearly all would never return. The Vichy collaborationist government, led by Marshal
Philippe Pétain, immediately upon assuming power set up a commission to "redefine French citizenship" with the aim of stripping "undesirables", including naturalized citizens, of their French nationality. Chagall had been so involved in his art, that it was not until October 1940, after the Vichy government, at the behest of the Nazi occupying forces, began passing anti-Semitic laws, that he began to understand the significance what was happening around him. Hearing that Jews were being removed from public and academic positions, the Chagalls finally "woke up to the danger they faced." But Wullschlager notes that "by then they were trapped." Their only refuge could be America, but "they could not afford the passage to New York" or the large bond that each immigrant had to provide upon entry to ensure that they would not become a financial burden to the country.
Escaping occupied France
According to Wullschlager, "[T]he speed with which France collapsed astonished everyone: the French army, with British support, capitulated even more quickly than Poland had done" a year earlier, even though Poland had been attacked by both Germany and Russia. "Shock waves crossed the Atlantic... as Paris had until then been equated with civilization throughout the non-Nazi world." Yet the attachment of the Chagalls to France "blinded them to the urgency of the situation." Nor were they alone in their slow reaction to the coming
Holocaust, to be aided by France's collaboration, as many other well-known Russian and Jewish artists eventually sought to escape: these included
Chaim Soutine,
Max Ernst,
Max Beckmann,
Ludwig Fulda, author
Victor Serge and prize-winning author
Vladimir Nabokov, who although not Jewish himself, took a "passionate interest" in Jews and Israel. and with help from
Alfred Barr of the
New York Museum of Modern Art, Chagall was saved by having his name added to the list of prominent artists, whose lives were at risk, that the United States should try to extricate. He left France in May 1941, "when it was almost too late", adds Lewis.
Picasso and
Matisse were also among artists invited to come to America but they decided to remain in France. Chagall and Bella arrived in New York on June 23, 1941, which was the next day after Germany invaded Russia.
America (1941–1948)
Even before arriving in America in 1941, Chagall was awarded the
Carnegie Prize in 1939. After being in America he discovered that he had already achieved "international stature", writes Cogniat. He felt ill-suited in this new role in a foreign country, however, one whose language he could not yet speak. He became a public figure mostly against his will, feeling lost in the strange surroundings.
What compounded his discomfort in America was his knowing that he left France under Nazi occupation and that the fate of millions of other Jews was at risk. After a while he began to settle down in New York which was full of writers, painters, and composers who, like himself, had fled from Europe during the Nazi invasions. He spent time visiting galleries and museums, and befriended other painters including Piet Mondrian and André Breton.
Baal-Teshuva writes that Chagall "loved" going to the sections of New York where Jews lived, especially the Lower East Side. There he felt at home, enjoying the Jewish foods and being able to read the Yiddish press, which became his main source of information since he did not yet speak English.
Contemporary artists did not yet understand or even like Chagall's art. According to Baal-Teshuva, "they had little in common with a folkloristic storyteller of Russo-Jewish extraction with a propensity for mysticism." The Paris School, which was referred to as 'Parisian Surrealism,' meant little to them. Those attitudes would begin to change, however, when Pierre Matisse, the son of recognized French artist Henri Matisse, became his representative and held Chagall exhibitions in New York and Chicago in 1941. One of the earliest exhibitions included 21 of his masterpieces from 1910 to 1941. Art critic Henry McBride wrote about this exhibit for the New York Sun:
Aleko ballet (1942)
He was offered a commission by
choreographer Leonid Massine, of the New York Ballet Theatre to design the sets and costumes for his new ballet,
Aleko. This ballet would stage the words of
Pushkin's verse narrative
The Gypsies with the music of
Tchaikovsky. While Chagall had done stage settings before while in Russia, this was his first ballet, and it would give him the opportunity to visit
Mexico. While there he quickly began to appreciate the "primitive ways and colorful art of the Mexicans," notes Cogniat. He found "something very closely related to his own nature", and did all the color detail for the sets while there. Eventually, he created four large backdrops and had Mexican seamstresses sew the ballet costumes.
When the ballet premiered on September 8, 1942 it was considered a "remarkable success." In the audience were other famous mural painters who came to see Chagall's work, including Diego Rivera and José Orozco. According to Baal-Teshuva, when the final bar of music ended, "there was a tumultuous applause and 19 curtain calls, with Chagall himself being called back onto the stage again and again." The ballet also opened in New York City four weeks later at the Metropolitan Opera and the response was repeated, "again Chagall was the hero of the evening." Art critic Edwin Denby wrote of the opening for the New York Herald Tribune that Chagall's work:
Coming to grips with World War II
After Chagall returned to New York in 1943, however, current events began to take on more importance for him, and this was reflected in his art, where he painted subjects including the
Crucifixion and scenes of war. He heard that the Germans had destroyed the town where he was raised, Vitebsk, and became greatly distressed. He heard about the
concentration camps and learned more about the
occupation of France. By 1944, months before the Allies attempted to
liberate France, he was coming to grips with the reality and significance of the war in Europe and on its Jewish populations. During a speech in February 1944, he described some of his feelings:
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In the same speech he credited his homeland of Russia with doing the most to save the Jews:
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On September 2, 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine. As a result, he stopped all work for many months, and when he did resume painting his first pictures were concerned with preserving Bella's memory. Wullschlager writes of the effect on Chagall: "As news poured in through 1945 of the ongoing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, Bella took her place in Chagall's mind with the millions of Jewish victims." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe had sapped her will to live."
After a year of living with his daughter, Ida, and her husband Michel Gordey, he entered into a romance with Virginia Haggard, great-niece of the author Henry Rider Haggard; their relationship lasted seven years. They had a child together, David McNeil, born 22 June 1946,; Haggard recalled her "seven years of plenty" with Chagall in her book, My Life with Chagall (Robert Hale, 1986).
A few months after France succeeded in liberating Paris from Nazi occupation, with the help of the Allied armies, Chagall published a letter in a Paris weekly, "To the Paris Artists":
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Post-war years
By 1946 his artwork was becoming more widely recognized. The
Museum of Modern Art in New York held a large exhibition with 40 years of his work which gave visitors one of the first complete impressions of the changing nature of his art over the years. The war had by then ended and he began making plans to return to Paris. According to Cogniat, "He found he was even more deeply attached than before, not only to the atmosphere of Paris, but to the city itself, to its houses and its views." Chagall summed up his years living in America:
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He went back for good in the autumn of 1947, where he attended the opening of the exhibition of his works at the Musée National d'Art Moderne.
France (1948–1985)
After returning to France he traveled throughout Europe and chose to live in the
Côte d'Azur which by that time had become somewhat of an "artistic centre."
Matisse lived above
Nice, while
Picasso lived in
Vallauris. Although they lived nearby and sometimes worked together, there was artistic rivalry between them as their work was so distinctly different, and they never became long-term friends. According to Picasso's mistress,
Françoise Gilot, Picasso still had a great deal of respect for Chagall, and once told her,
In April 1952, Virginia Haggard left Chagall for the photographer Charles Leirens; she went on to become a professional photographer herself.
Chagall's daughter Ida married art historian Franz Meyer in January 1952, and feeling that her father missed the companionship of a woman in his home, introduced him to Valentina (Vava) Brodsky, a woman from a similar Russian Jewish background, who had run a successful millinery business in London. She became his secretary, and after a few months agreed to stay only if Chagall married her. The marriage took place in July, 1952, - though six years later, when there was conflict between Ida and Vava, "Marc and Vava divorced and immediately remarried under an agreement more favourable to Vava" (Jean-Paul Crespelle: Chagall, l'Amour le Reve et la Vie, quoted in Haggard: My Life with Chagall).
In the years ahead he was able to produce not just paintings and graphic art, but also numerous sculptures and ceramics, including wall tiles, painted vases, plates and jugs. He also began working in larger-scale formats, producing large murals, stained glass windows, mosaics and tapestries.
Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963)
In 1963 Chagall was commissioned to paint the new ceiling for the
Paris Opera, a majestic 19th-century building and national monument.
André Malraux, France's Minister of Culture wanted something unique and decided Chagall would be the ideal artist. However, this choice of artist led to controversy: some objected to having a Russian Jew decorate a French national monument; others took exception to the ceiling of the historic building being painted by a modern artist. Some magazines wrote condescending articles about Chagall and Malraux, about which Chagall commented to one writer:
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Nonetheless, Chagall remained on the project which took the 77-year-old Chagall a year to complete. The final canvas was nearly 2,400 square feet (220 sq. meters) and required 440 pounds of paint. It had five sections which were glued to polyester panels and hoisted up to the ceiling. The images Chagall painted on the canvas paid tribute to the composers Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Berlioz and Ravel, as well as to famous actors and dancers.
It was presented to the public on September 23, 1964 in the presence of Malraux and 2,100 invited guests. The Paris correspondent for the New York Times wrote, "For once the best seats were in the uppermost circle: Baal-Teshuva writes:
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After the new ceiling was unveiled, "even the bitterest opponents of the commission seemed to fall silent", writes Baal-Teshuva. "Unanimously, the press declared Chagall's new work to be a great contribution to French culture." Chagall did not disappoint the trust that Malraux had placed in him, with Malraux later saying, "What other living artist could have painted the ceiling of the Paris Opera in the way Chagall did?... He is above all one of the great colourists of our time... many of his canvases and the Opera ceiling represent sublime images that rank among the finest poetry of our time, just as Titian produced the finest poetry of his day." In Chagall's speech to the audience he explained the meaning of the work:
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Art styles and techniques
Color
According to Cogniat, in all Chagall's work during all stages of his life, it was his colors which attracted and captured the viewer's attention. In his earlier years his range was limited by his emphasis on form and his pictures never gave the impression of painted drawings. He adds, "The colors are a living, integral part of the picture and are never passively flat, or banal like an afterthought. They sculpt and animate the volume of the shapes... they indulge in flights of fancy and invention which add new perspectives and graduated, blended tones... His colors do not even attempt to imitate nature but rather to suggest movements, planes and rhythms."
He was able to convey striking images using only two or three colors. Cogniat writes, "Chagall is unrivalled in this ability to give a vivid impression of explosive movement with the simplest use of colors..." Throughout his life his colors created a "vibrant atmosphere" which was based on "his own personal vision."
His paintings would later sell for record prices. In October 2010, for example, his painting "Bestiaire et Musique," depicting a bride and a fiddler floating in a night sky amid circus performers and animals, "was the star lot" at an auction in Hong Kong. When it sold for $4.1 million, it became the most expensive contemporary Western painting ever sold in Asia.
According to Cogniat, there are certain elements in his art that have remained permanent and seen throughout his career. One of those was his choice of subjects and the way they were portrayed. "The most obviously constant element is his gift for happiness and his instinctive compassion, which even in the most serious subjects prevents him from dramatization..." Musicians have been a constant during all stages of his work. After he first got married, "lovers have sought each other, embraced, caressed, floated through the air, met in wreaths of flowers, stretched, and swooped like the melodious passage of their vivid day-dreams. Acrobats contort themselves with the grace of exotic flowers on the end of their stems; flowers and foliage abound everywhere." Wullschlager explains the sources for these images:
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Chagall described his love of circus people:
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His early pictures were often of the town where he was born and raised, Vitebsk. Cogniat notes that they are realistic and give the impression of firsthand experience by capturing a moment in time with action, often with a dramatic image. In his later years, as for instance in the "Bible series", subjects were put on a loftier plane. He managed to blend the real with the fantastic, and combined with his use of color the pictures were always at least acceptable if not powerful. He never attempted to present pure reality but always created his atmospheres through fantasy. In all cases Chagall's "most persistent subject is life itself, in its simplicity or its hidden complexity... He presents for our study places, people, and objects from his own life".
Jewish themes
After absorbing the techniques of
Fauvism and
Cubism, he was able to blend them with his own folkish style. He gave the grim life of
Hasidic Jews the "romantic overtones of a charmed world", notes Goodman. It was by combining the aspects of
Modernism with his "unique artistic language", that he was able to catch the attention of critics and collectors throughout Europe. Generally, it was his boyhood of living in a Russian provincial town that gave him a continual source of imaginative stimuli. Chagall would become one of many Jewish émigrés who later became noted artists, all of them similarly having once been part of "Russia's most numerous and creative minorities", notes Goodman.
World War I, which ended in 1918, had displaced nearly a million Jews and destroyed what remained of the provincial shtetl culture that had defined life for most Eastern European Jews for centuries. Goodman notes, "The fading of traditional Jewish society left artists like Chagall with powerful memories that could no longer be fed by a tangible reality. Instead, that culture became an emotional and intellectual source that existed solely in memory and the imagination... So rich had the experience been, it sustained him for the rest of his life." Sweeney adds that "if you ask Chagall to explain his paintings, he would reply, 'I don't understand them at all. They are not literature. They are only pictorial arrangements of images that obsess me..."
In 1948, after returning to France from the U.S. after the war, he saw for himself the destruction that the war had brought to Europe and the Jewish populations. Some of his art would thereafter reflect his visions and sadness. In 1951, as part of a memorial book dedicated to eighty-four Jewish artists who were killed by the Nazis in France, he wrote a poem entitled "For the Slaughtered Artists: 1950", which inspired paintings such as the "Song of David" (see photo):
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Lewis writes that Chagall "remains the most important visual artist to have borne witness to the world of East European Jewry... and inadvertently became the public witness of a now vanished civilization." Although Judaism has religious inhibitions about pictorial art of many religious subjects, Chagall managed to use his fantasy images as a form of visual metaphor combined with folk imagery. His "Fiddler on the Roof", for example, combines a folksy village setting with a fiddler as a way to show the Jewish love of music as important to the Jewish spirit.
Art historian Franz Meyer points out that one of the main reasons for the unconventional nature of his work is related to the hassidic movement which inspired the world of his childhood and youth and had actually impressed itself on most Eastern European Jews since the 18th century. He writes, "For Chagall this is one of the deepest sources, not of inspiration, but of a certain spiritual attitude... the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment of his art." In a talk that Chagall gave in 1963 while visiting America, he discussed some of those impressions.
However, Chagall had a complex relationship with Judaism. On the one hand, he credited his Russian Jewish cultural background as being crucial to his artistic imagination. But however ambivalent he was about his religion, he could not avoid drawing upon his Jewish past for artistic material. As an adult, he was not a practicing Jew, but through his paintings and stained glass, he continually tried to suggest a more "universal message", using both Jewish and Christian themes. In 1973 Israel released a 12-stamp set with images of the stained-glass windows (see image).
The windows symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel who were blessed by Jacob and Moses in the verses which conclude Genesis and Deuteronomy. In those books, notes Leymarie, "The dying Moses repeated Jacob's solemn act and, in a somewhat different order, also blessed the twelve tribes of Israel who were about to enter the land of Canaan... In the synagogue, where the windows are distributed in the same way, the tribes form a symbolic guard of honor around the tabernacle." Leymarie describes the physical and spiritual significance of the windows:
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At the dedication ceremony in 1962, Chagall described his feelings about the windows:
memorial at U.N ]]
, Mainz, Germany]]
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;United Nations building (1964)
In 1964 Chagall created a stained-glass window, entitled "Peace", for the United Nations in honor of Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN's second secretary general who was killed in a plane crash in Africa in 1961. The window is about wide and high and contains symbols of peace and love along with musical symbols. These changes appealed to Chagall who had been experimenting with Cubism and wanted a way to enliven his images. Designing murals and stage designs, Chagall's "dreams sprang to life and became an actual movement."
As a result, Chagall played an important role in Russian artistic life during that time and "was one of the most important forces in the current urge towards anti-realism" which helped the new Russia invent "astonishing" creations. Many of his designs were done for the Jewish Theatre in Moscow which put on numerous Jewish plays by playwrights such as Gogol and Singe. Chagall's set designs helped create illusory atmospheres which became the essence of the theatrical performances. His first assignment designing sets after Russia was for the ballet "Aleko" in 1942, while living in America. In 1945 he was also commissioned to design the sets and costumes for Stravinsky's "The Firebird." These designs contributed greatly towards his enhanced reputation in America as a leading artist.
Cogniat describes how Chagall's designs "immerse the spectator in a luminous, colored fairy-land where forms are mistily defined and the spaces themselves seem animated with whirlwinds or explosions." His technique of using theatrical color in this way reached its peak when Chagall returned to Paris and designed the sets for Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloë" in 1958.
In 1964 he repainted the ceiling of the Paris Opera using of canvas, and in 1966 he painted two monumental murals for the outside of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The pieces were titled "the Sources of Music" and "The Triumph of Music", which he completed in France and shipped to New York.
Tapestries
Chagall also designed tapestries which were woven under the direction of Yvette Cauquil-Prince, who also collaborated with
Picasso. These tapestries are much rarer than his paintings, with only 40 of them ever reaching the commercial market.
Final years and death
Author Serena Davies writes that "By the time he died in France in 1985—the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years—he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the
Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War."
Legacy and influence
Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager calls Chagall a "pioneer of modern art and one of its greatest figurative painters... [who] invented a visual language that recorded the thrill and terror of the twentieth century." She adds:
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Art historians Ingo Walther and Rainer Metzger refer to Chagall as a "poet, dreamer, and exotic apparition." They add that throughout his long life the "role of outsider and artistic eccentric" came naturally to him, as he seemed to be a kind of intermediary between worlds: "as a Jew with a lordly disdain for the ancient ban on image-making; as a Russian who went beyond the realm of familiar self-sufficiency; or the son of poor parents, growing up in a large and needy family." Yet he went on to establish himself in the sophisticated world of "elegant artistic salons." Leymarie writes that Chagall "transcended the limits of his century. He has unveiled possibilities unsuspected by an art that had lost touch with the Bible, and in doing so he has achieved a wholly new synthesis of Jewish culture long ignored by painting." He adds that although Chagall's art cannot be confined to religion, his "most moving and original contributions, what he called 'his message,' are those drawn from religious or, more precisely, Biblical sources."
Walther and Metzger try to summarize Chagall's contribution to art:
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Exhibitions and tributes
In 1967, the
Louvre in Paris exhibited 17 large-scale paintings and 38 gouaches, under the title of "Message Biblique", which he donated to the nation of France on condition that a museum was to be built for them in Nice. In 1969 work began on the museum, called
Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall. It was completed and inaugurated in July 7, 1973, on Chagall's birthday. Today it contains monumental paintings on biblical themes, three stained-glass windows, tapestries, a large mosaic and numerous gouaches for the "Bible series."
From 1969 to 1970, the Grand Palais in Paris held the largest Chagall exhibition to date, including 474 works. The exhibition was called "Hommage a Marc Chagall", was opened by the French President and "proved an enormous success with the public and critics alike."
In 1973, he traveled to Russia, his first visit back since he left in 1922. The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow held a special exhibition for the occasion of his visit. He was able to see again the murals he long ago made for the Jewish Theatre. In St. Petersburg, he was reunited with two of his sisters, whom he had not seen for more than 50 years.
In 1977, the city of Jerusalem bestowed upon him the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award.
;Current exhibits
in Zürich, Switzerland]]
Chagall's work is housed in a variety of locations, including the 'Palais Garnier' (the Opera de Paris), the Chase Tower Plaza of downtown Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the Metz Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Reims, the Fraumünster abbey in Zürich, Switzerland, the Church of St. Stephan in Mainz, Germany and the Biblical Message museum in Nice, France, which Chagall helped to design.
The only church in the world with a complete set of Chagall window-glass is located in the tiny village of Tudeley, in Kent, England.
Twelve stained-glass windows are part of Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, Israel. Each frame depicts a different tribe.
In the United States, the Union Church of Pocantico Hills contains a set of Chagall windows commemorating the prophets, which was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr..
In 2007, an exhibition of his work titled "Chagall of Miracles", was held at Il Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome, Italy.
The family home on Pokrovskaya Street, Vitebsk, is now the Marc Chagall Museum.
The regional art museum in Novosibirsk has a Chagall exhibition on his biblical subjects between 16 June 2010 and 29 August 2010.
The Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, Texas currently hosts many of his works as well.
See also
Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio
I and the Village
La Mariée (The Bride)
References
Bibliography
Alexander, Sidney, Marc Chagall: A Biography G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1978.
Monica Bohm-Duchen, Chagall (Art & Ideas) Phaidon 1998. ISBN 0-7148-3160-3
Chagall, Marc, My Life Peter Owen Ltd, 1965 (2003) ISBN 978-0-7206-1186-1
Compton, Susann, Chagall Harry N. Abrams, 1985.
Harshav, Benjamin, Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative, Stanford University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8047-4214-6
Kamensky, Aleksandr, Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia, Trilistnik, Moscow, 2005 (In Russian)
Kamensky, Aleksandr, Chagall: The Russian Years 1907-1922., Rizzoli, New York, 1988 (Abridged version of Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia) ISBN 0-8478-1080-1
Nikolaj, Aaron, Marc Chagall., (Monographie) Reinbek 2003 (In German)
Shishanov V.A. Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art – a history of creation and a collection. 1918-1941. – Minsk: Medisont, 2007. – 144 p.
Wilson, Jonathan Marc Chagall, Schocken, 2007 ISBN 0-8052-4201-5
Wullschlager, Jackie. Chagall: A Biography Knopf, 2008
External links
Official site of Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk, Belarus
Official site of Marc Chagall Museum in Nice, France
Marc Chagall at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Marc Chagall at Olga's Gallery
Pictures of: Me and My Village, Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, and Chagall's illustrations to the Bible: Song of Songs III (1960), Jacob's Dream (1954-67), Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise (1954-67), and Abraham and the Three Angels (1954-67)
Column about revivals of "Fiddler on the Roof"
Marc Chagall Website
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Marc Chagall. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Video slideshows
Jerusalem Windows 3 min.
Slideshow 8 min., music by Itzhak Perlman
Slideshow 10 min. with modern music
Chagall windows in Jerusalem Israel, 1.5 min. with music
"Shagal's Passion" Russian-made animation about Chagall, 7 minutes with European music
"Fiddler on the Roof" painting animated 1 min.
Slideshow - early memories and village scenes 6 min. with classical piano
Slideshow 6 min., with classical music
Daphnis and Chloe lithographs">Slideshow – Daphnis and Chloe lithographs France, 8 min., music by Ravel
Category:1887 births
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Category:Russian painters
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Category:Belarusian painters
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Category:French painters
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Category:Modern painters
Category:Neo-primitivism
Category:Russian avant-garde
Category:Russian Jews
Category:French Jews
Category:Soviet Jews
Category:Russian stained glass artists and manufacturers
Category:Yiddish-language poets
Category:Surrealist artists
Category:Ballet designers
Category:Levites
Category:Jewish artists
