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GERMAN

Chagall, Marc
born: 7.7.1887 in Liosno/Vitebsk, Russia 

died: 28.3.1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France

Against the will of his parents, who hoped he would pursue a business career, Marc Chagall decided to become an artist. In the winter of 1906-1907 he went to St. Petersburg, where he attended several small art schools. He earned his living by painting signs and retouching photographs. In 1908, Chagall succeeded in being accepted into the progressive Svanseva School, where Leon Bakst became his teacher. Bakst was a member of the St. Petersburg avant-garde, which stood under the influence of international Art Nouveau. The decorative principles of this style are strongly evident in Chagall's 1909 Portraitof the Artist's Sister, which represents his sister Mania. The figure, brought into the very near foreground, is intersected by the edge of the picture, and appears as if compressed into the rectanglar field. The effect of flatness is underscored by the blue-and-white pattern of both background and skirt. Thanks to this interplay of color and form, a close link is established between the figure and the pictorial space, which appear fused and unified by a pervading atmosphere dominated by gradations of red and blue. Bakst drew Chagall's attention to modern French painting. Thanks to the support of a patron, the young artist was able to move to Paris in the summer of 1910. One of the first pictures he did there was Sabbath (1910). The tendency to create a certain atmosphere or mood through color, already apparent in Chagall's St. Petersburg phase, culminated in this work. His experience of the Fauves, but especially of the work of Vincent van Gogh, which he studied in Paris, is clearly evident in the palette of Sabbath. The colors, as if liberated from the solid, compositional framework, seem to hover in the pictorial space, pur expressive, luminous pigments. Another striking feature ofthe pain , is the strange stillness that pervades the room. Although all the persons gathered there seem occupied with their own thoughts, they are linked with one another by the peaceful mood of Sabbath, which seems to be distilled in the weightlessly floating veils of red, green, and yellow. Two further early works from the Paris phase are Man at a Table with Cat (c. 1911} and 0ld Jew (c. 1912}. The subject ofthe drinker, seen in the former painting, preoccupied many artists around the turn ofthe century, for the drinker symbolized loneliness. In Chagall's image, the emotional content of the theme is heightened by the distorted perspective, by the inordinately large foreground figure and his grimacing face, as well as by the strong contrast between the bright red hues in the left half of the picture and the black and white gradations on the right. Loneliness also plays a role in the drawing of the O!d few, who gives the impression of being completely withdrawn within himself. Both images rely on certain expressionistic means. OfdJew is the less dramatically conceived of the two. There is no overt plot or event depicted, although a covert one may be present - the green cast of the old man's face might be interpreted as a sign of his being lost to the world. Chagall's gouache Over Vitebsk was created in 1914, the year of his return to Russia. In it, he depicted the figure of the man floating over the town as if it were the most natural thing in the world, thus anticipating, by a decade, the psychological and visual innovations of Surrealism. The hovering figure was to become a frequent theme in Chagall's work, in which rational and tangibly perceptible reality blended with dreams and memories to produce a reality heightened by imaginative vision. In 1923, Chagall left Vitebsk and returned to Paris again. Now he began to involve himself in landscape painting, as witnessed by his canvas Yellow Nouse. Yet instead of depicting a French landscape, the artist once again turned back to his memories, this time af summer in his hometown of Vitebsk. The feathery strokes of emerald green and ultramarine, light lemon yellow and light vermilian, vividly evoke the shimmering heat ofa summer's day. From 195o onwards, Chagall lived in the small resort town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, near Nice, for whose "Chapelle du calvaire" he created a sequence of works on Old Testament subjects. Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law (1955-1956} was originally conceived as part of this sequence. The composition is divided in half by the imposing figure of Moses. To the right, his people dance around the Golden Calf. Above them is a vignette showing Moses receiving, for the second time, the Divine Covenant which was to determine the life of coming generations, who are depicted in the left half of the picture. People gather at the bottom of the slope, waiting expectantly for the breaking of the tablets. Above them rises the figure of a priest, holding the torah containing the covenant over the heads of a young couple being married under a canopy. Thus the wild, heathen revelry at the right is contrasted with a future of peace and plenty under the laws of God. Chagall does not depict the Bible story as an event that is past and gone, but as embodying a divine promise that takes effect in the here and now. Past and present appear as an indissoluble unity.