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 born:
1887 Vitebsk, Russia
died: 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.
Taken from German section of 'Artistgroup'
www.kuenstlergruppe.de
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