Marc
Zaharovich Chagall , 1887-1985, (whose
given name was Moishe Shagal), was born in Liozna, near
the largely Jewish city of Vitebsk in Belarus, (then part of the Russian Empire)
. He lived a good portion of his life in France and has
been considered one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He worked
in painting, stained glass, tapestries and fine art prints.
Marc
Chagall spent an enormous amount of time making prints and they are highly
sought in the markets. Their wistfulness and sweetness is like candy to a
child, but they do describe a magical existence where people can often daydream.
He was not concerned about people’s
perceptions of his work. He made images that were personally up-lifting, and
the pure saturation of his colors crank up the volume on emotion. I, for one,
do not care for his continued use of unmodified colors, or a lot of his
child-like rendering of figures, but I can appreciate his effort to bring a
sense of wonder about the world to each of his works. In doing this article I
selected images that I felt had something ‘fresh’ about them. Honestly, his more
starkly black and white prints are quite appealing. A lot of Chagall’s work
reflects his contacts and exposure to the Parisian artistic hub working before
and during the world wars. There are clear references to Picasso and Leger,
while some works relate more clearly with his work in stained glass. In any
case, I hope you will enjoy this assortment for your holiday viewing pleasure.
Biography
Chagall was the eldest of nine
children. His family’s name, Shagal is a variation of the name Segal, which is
a Levitic group within a Jewish community. His was a deeply religious Hasidic
family and he credited the Hasidic culture with having a major impact upon his
work. He developed a style that dealt with Jewish folk culture and his
childhood memories of life in Vitebsk. Throughout his career "he remained
true to his Jewish roots.”
As a
child, Chagall studied Hebrew and the Bible at the local
Jewish religious school. When he saw a fellow student drawing one day, he
claimed it was a revelation and he told his mother that he would become an
artist.
Chagall moved to St.
Petersburg in 1906 to study
art. He studied under Léon Bakst at
the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting and he stayed in St. Petersburg
until 1910. Then he moved to Paris to
develop his artistic style, enrolling at
the La Palette art academy. His sensibility for color was pure, unabashed and he was soon recognized by
poets, writers and artists like Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert
Delaunay and Fernand Léger.
In Paris, he became aware of the latest art movements Cubism, Fauvism and
eventually Surrealism, but the subject of his work in Paris remained his
homeland. He painted Jewish subjects from his memories of Vitebsk, and "…
they were his dreams". Although
some of his imagery influenced other surrealist artists, Chagall did not
want his work to be associated with any movement. He considered his work unique and the symbols
associated with it deeply personal.
His
goal during this period was to become a successful artist to provide for his
family, and as opportunity would have it, he became the Commissar of Arts for
Vitebsk, establishing a distinguished art school in the Soviet Union. In 1915,
Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Famine had spread
after the war ended in 1918 and Chagall found work as an art teacher to war
orphans. After struggling for two years, he moved back to France to develop his
art.
In 1923, Chagall left Moscow to
return to France. He formed a business partnership with French art dealer Ambroise
Vollard. It was then he began to make etchings and other prints for
a series of illustrated books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, the
Bible, and the Fables of La Fontaine. During this period he also traveled
throughout France, Holland, Spain,
Italy, Egypt, Palestine. Chagall felt at home in Palestine amongst the Yiddish
and Russian population. He later told a friend that Palestine gave him
"the most vivid impression he had ever received", and as a result, he
immersed himself in "the history of the Jews”.
When Hitler gained
power in Germany, anti-Semitism laws were being introduced and Dachau had
been established. The Nazis had begun their campaign against anything abstract,
expressionist or surreal, intellectual, Jewish, foreign, socialist-inspired, or
difficult to understand. The new German
authorities made a mockery of Chagall's art, and he and his work was pronounced
degenerate. It had a profound effect
upon the artist.
After Germany invaded and
occupied France, Chagall had been so involved with his art, that it was not
until 1940 that he began to understand the Vichy government began approving
anti-Semitic laws and that Jews were being systematically removed from public
and academic positions. Many Russian and Jewish artists sought escape to the
United States, including Chaim Soutine, Max Ernst, Max Beckmann,
author Victor Serge and prize-winning author Vladimir
Nabokov. It was Alfred Barr of
the New York Museum of Modern Art and Chagall’s
daughter Ida, who helped Chagall and his wife come to the United States in
1941. Chagall was one of over 2,000 who were rescued by Varian Fry,
the American journalist, and Hiram Bingham
IV, the American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, who ran a rescue
operation to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of Europe to the US by providing them with forged visas.
Chagall's
colors attracted and captured the viewer's attention. During his earlier period
his work was limited by an emphasis on form but his colors were a living part
of the picture and suggested movement and rhythm. Lovers, musicians and acrobats were often a
part of his subject matter. They
represented, "a sort of grace, delicacy, precariousness, and a fragility
of love and life.
Chagall
once said of his work 'I don't understand
them at all. They are not literature. They are only pictorial arrangements of
images that obsess me...”I painted pictures upside down, decapitated people and
dissected them, scattering the pieces in the air, all in the name of another
perspective, another kind of picture composition and another formalism”.
In 1960, Chagall began creating stained glass windows,
which I will admit feel the most truly
spontaneous creations of his long career. They are pure joy and he enjoyed
seeing natural light pass through their many-colored panes. The ephemeral
experience of seeing people stop in jaw-gaping awe at the windows at the Art
Institute of Chicago was always an amazing sight. They transcended the everyman’s
artistic experience and brought beauty to their existence.
On a personal note, Chagall married
his first love Bella. A year later, they had a daughter, Ida. In 1944, Bella died
and Chagall didn’t make any art for many months. He later was associated with
Virginia Haggard, great-niece of the author Henry Rider Haggard. They had a son, David
McNeil. In the 1950s, he was introduced to
Valentina (Vava) Brodsky, a woman from a similar Russian Jewish background and
they remained companions for many years. The gravestone of Marc Chagall and his
wife can be found in Saint Paul de Vence, France.
The
famed 20thc. art critic Robert Hughes said Chagall w as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the
twentieth century". Pablo Picasso even
once rdeclared that "Chagall will be
the only painter left who understands what color
really is". Although he was
personally caught up in the horrors of European history between 1914 and 1945:
world wars, revolution, ethnic persecution, the murder and exile of millions, he
chose to put his experiences into images to which everyone could immediately respond.
He was also referred to as a "poet, dreamer, and exotic apparition."
From
his vivid imagination and memories Chagall was able to use scenes of peasant
life, and intimate views of a Jewish village. There was much to support a
child-like view of innocence and love of the world which Chagall never really lost,
but the realities of his long life saw tragedy and loss like everyone else’s.
What is amazing about his work is that it retains an outward ‘joie de vivre’ into
the 21st century, and that it will most likely endure throughout the
ages.
Exhibitions:
1939, Carnegie Prize, Pittsburgh, PA
1960, Brandeis University, honorary degree in Laws, at
its 9th Commencement
1967, "Message Biblique", the Louvre, Paris, France
1969, Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall.
1969 to 1970, "Hommage a Marc Chagall", the Grand Palais,
Paris, France
1973, The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia
1977, the city of JerusalemYakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of
Jerusalem) award.
1982, Moderna
Museet in Stockholm, Sweden
1985, the Royal Academy in London , England
2003, the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, a major retrospective in conjunction with the
Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Nice, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Public
collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Biblical Message Museum, Nice, France
Church of St. Stephan, Mainz, Germany
Fraumünster abbey,Zurich,
Switzerland
Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem , Jerusalem,
Israel
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
Marc Chagall Museum,Vitebsk, Belarus. It was the family home on
Pokrovskaya Street.
The Marc Chagall Yufuin Kinrin-ko Museum , Yufuin,
Kyushu, Japan
Metz Cathedral,Notre-Dame de Reims, France
Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, Texas
'Palais Garnier' (the Opera de Paris), France
The only church in the world with a complete set of
Chagall window-glass is in Tudeley, Kent, England
Union Church of Pocantico Hills. Commissioned by John
D. Rockefeller, Jr.
United Nations Headquarters, NY
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