Artsper brings you ten facts about the man behind the flying cows and dancing fiddlers. When Chagall eventually began painting such depictions, they were met with fierce criticism from his family, to the extent that his devout uncle refused to shake his hand. Disconnected, helpless and uncomfortable, Chagall yearned for Paris and Europe. Very few artists managed to exhibit at the Louvre during their lifetime; Georges Braque was the first with his work, Still life with harp and violin.
His palette during these years often darkened to a tragic tone, with depictions of a burning Vitebsk and fleeing rabbis. After weeks of sitting in his apartment on Riverside Drive immersed in grief, tended to by his daughter, Ida, then 28 and married, he began to work again. She was married to John McNeil, a Scottish painter who suffered from depression, and she had a 5-year-old daughter, Jean, to support.
She was 30 and Chagall 57 when they met, and before long the two were talking painting, then dining together. They bought a simple wooden house with an adjoining cottage for him to use as a studio. America still has to be painted. They eventually settled in Provence, in the hilltop town of Vence. Once again the resourceful Ida found her father a housekeeper— this time in the person of Valentina Brodsky, a year-old Russian living in London.
Chagall, then 65, and Vava, as she was known, soon married. The new Mrs. I never saw him answer a telephone himself. He taught me to visit the Louvre on Sunday, when it was free, and he always picked up all the sugar cubes on the table before leaving a restaurant. In addition to canvases, Chagall produced lithographs, etchings, sculptures, ceramics, mosaics and tapestries.
He also took on such demanding projects as designing stainedglass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah-HebrewUniversityMedicalCenter in Jerusalem. Suddenly he would raise the charcoal with his thumb and, very fast, start tracing straight lines, ovals, lozenges, finding an aesthetic structure in the incoherence.
Aclown would appear, a juggler, a horse, a violinist, spectators, as if by magic. When the outline was in place, he would back off and sit down, exhausted like a boxer at the end of a round.
In he relinquished his position and moved his family to Moscow, the post-revolution capital of Russia. In Moscow, Chagall was soon commissioned to create sets and costumes for various productions at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, where he would paint a series of murals titled Introduction to the Jewish Theater as well. In , Chagall also found work as a teacher at a school for war orphans.
By , however, Chagall found that his art had fallen out of favor, and seeking new horizons he left Russia for good.
After a brief stay in Berlin, where he unsuccessfully sought to recover the work exhibited at Der Sturm before the war, Chagall moved his family to Paris in September Shortly after their arrival, he was commissioned by art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce a series of etchings for a new edition of Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls.
He also published his autobiography, My Life , and in received a retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland. With the eruption of World War II, Chagall and his family moved to the Loire region before moving farther south to Marseilles following the invasion of France.
Chagall and his family would be among the more than 2, who received visas and escaped this way. Arriving in New York City in June , Chagall discovered that he was already a well-known artist there and, despite a language barrier, soon became a part of the exiled European artist community. A more personal blow struck Chagall in September , when his beloved Bella died of a viral infection, leaving the artist incapacitated with grief.
His sadness at the loss of his wife would haunt Chagall for years to come, as represented most poignantly in his paintings Around Her and The Wedding Candles.
He also became involved with a young English artist named Virginia McNeil, and in she gave birth to their son, David.
After seven years in exile, in Chagall returned to France with Virginia and David as well as Virginia's daughter, Jean, from a previous marriage. Their arrival coincided with the publication of Chagall's illustrated edition of Dead Souls , which had been interrupted by the onset of the war. Although Chagall became well known for his religious and Biblical motifs, the blatant Christian symbolism present in White Crucifixion and other works particularly his stained-glass windows for several churches is surprising given Chagall's devout Orthodox Jewish background.
However, this work is a clear indication of Chagall's faith and his response to the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe at this time; here Jesus's suffering parallels that of his people. Jesus wears a Jewish prayer shawl, and whilst he suffers on the cross, Jewish figures on all sides of him suffer as well, fleeing from marauding invaders who burn a synagogue.
The painting rather poignantly inverts the notion that the crucifixion is purely a Christian symbol - indeed that might only serve as a reminder of what divides Jews from Christians. Instead it makes the Crucifixion into a sign of their common suffering. Following the sudden death of the UN's secretary general, Dag Hammarskjold, killed in a plane crash in , the Staff of the United Nations set up a Committee and a Foundation to provide a "living memorial" to Hammarskjold and all those who died in the cause of world peace.
The committee invited Chagall to contribute a piece of his work, and it was soon decided that the monument would be a free-standing piece of stained glass. The breadth and detail of the window is staggering, comprised of free-floating figures and faith-based symbols throughout, co-existing blissfully in a heaven-meets-earth setting.
Chagall considered this window, today referred to as the "Chagall Window," not just a memorial to one man, but a thank-you card of sorts to the country that granted him asylum during his time of need in World War II.
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf. Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors. The Art Story. Ways to support us. Movements and Styles: Expressionism. I had to find some special occupation, some kind of work that would not force me to turn away from the sky and the stars, that would allow me to discover the meaning of life.
If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art. It is the color of love.
0コメント