Marc Chagall 1887-1985 Grew up in a Russian shtetl (village) in a large close-knit Jewish family. Studied art in St. Petersburg and was the victim of anti-Semitism.

Presentation on theme: "Marc Chagall 1887-1985 Grew up in a Russian shtetl (village) in a large close-knit Jewish family. Studied art in St. Petersburg and was the victim of anti-Semitism."— Presentation transcript:

1 Marc Chagall Grew up in a Russian shtetl (village) in a large close-knit Jewish family. Studied art in St. Petersburg and was the victim of anti-Semitism. Actively participated in the Russian Revolution. Became a French citizen, but fled the Nazies during WWII for the United States. Marc Chagall ( ) is a well-known Belarusian-born French painter and designer, distinguished for his surrealistic inventiveness. He is recognized as one of the most significant painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. Chagall was born July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Belarus. The eldest of nine chidren in a poor Jewish family, Chagall passed his childhood steeped in Hasidic culture. With his mother's support, and despite his father's disapproval, Chagall pursued his interest in art. His first teacher was Belarusian-born Jewish painter Yehuda Pen. Chagall pursued his interest in art, going to St. Petersburg in 1907 to study art with Leon Bakst. Influenced by contemporary Russian painting, Chagall's distinctive, child-like style, often centering on images from his childhood in Belarus, began to emerge. Jews could only live in St. Petersburg with a permit at this time, and he was jailed for a brief time. In 1910, he moved to Paris, where he associated, among others, with Guillaume Apollinaire (a famous French poet who also has some Belarusian roots). It was during this period that Chagall painted some of his most famous paintings of the Jewish shtetl or village, and developed the features that became recognizable trademarks of his art. Strong and often bright colors portray the world with a dreamlike, non-realistic simplicity, and the fusion of fantasy, religion, and nostalgia infuses his work with a joyous quality. Animals, workmen, lovers, and musicians populate his figures; the "fiddler on the roof" recurs frequently, often hovering within another scene. In 1914, before the outbreak of World War I, Chagall held a one-man show in Berlin. During WWI, he resided in Belarus, and in 1917, endorsing the revolution, he was appointed Commissar for Fine Arts in Vitebsk and then director of the newly established Free Academy of Art. He became involved in ambitious projects for a local academy, but he left after two and a half years in order to escape the revolutionary dictates of Malevich. After a stay in Moscow, where he worked in the Jewish theatre, then in Berlin, where he studied the technique of engraving, he returned to Paris in 1923. He lived in France permanently except for the years when, fleeing France during World War II, he stayed in the United States. In 1944 the artist's wife Bella died. During Chagall's exile in New York, he designed the costumes and stage decorations for a ballet performance of Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird. In 1946, the New York Museum of Modern Art had a huge retrospective exhibition of Marc Chagall's prints and paintings. The exhibition was a big success and was later shown in Chicago. Chagall painted with a variety of media, such as oils, water colors, and gouaches. His work also expanded to other forms of art, including ceramics, mosaics, and stained glass. Among his most famous building decorations are the ceiling of the Opera House in Paris, murals at the New York Metropolitan Opera, a glass window at the United Nations, and decorations at the Vatican. Chagall received many prizes and much recognition for his work. He was also one of very few artists to exhibit work at the Louvre in their lifetime.

2 Rain (La Pluie), 1911. Oil (and charcoal?) on canvas, 86.7 x 108 cm.
Rain (La Pluie), Oil (and charcoal?) on canvas, 86.7 x 108 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection PG 63. Marc Chagall © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Chagall often painted scenes of his childhood growing up in a small village in Russia. Marc Chagall’s early work is characterized by a neo-primitive style derived primarily from Russian icons and folk art. When he moved from Russia to Paris in the summer of 1910, the artist took with him several of these paintings depicting the life and customs of his native Vitebsk. During the next year he reworked them and also painted new compositions with similar motifs, infused with nostalgia for his homeland, but now adapted according to techniques and concepts he acquired from exposure to current French art. Nondescriptive, saturated color is used in Rain in combination with assertive areas of white and black to produce a highly ornamental and vivid surface. Chagall’s use of color was influenced by that of Henri Matisse and Robert Delaunay, whose work he saw almost immediately upon his arrival in Paris. The breaking up of some areas of the composition into shaded planes, for example the roof of the house and the left foreground, has its source in Cubism [more], though this device is handled somewhat randomly. Lucy Flint What is going on in this painting? What do you see that makes you say that? Is this a real or imaginary place? What elements of this painting seem real and what elements seem dreamlike? What emotions do you notice in the artwork? How did the artist use line, shape, and color to contribute to the mood or meaning? Why do you think this artist created this work? Rain (La Pluie), Oil (and charcoal?) on canvas, 86.7 x 108 cm.

3 I and the Village, 1911, Oil on canvas, 6' 3 5/8" x 59 5/8"
Chagall dramatically expressed his feelings about his personal experiences through: Symbolic imagery Unexpected colors Unrealistic sizes and proportions Odd juxtapositions Simplified-looking, gravity-defying drawings Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 63 Painted the year after Chagall came to Paris, I and the Village evokes his memories of his native Hasidic community outside Vitebsk. In the village, peasants and animals lived side by side, in a mutual dependence here signified by the line from peasant to cow, connecting their eyes. The peasant's flowering sprig, symbolically a tree of life, is the reward of their partnership. For Hasids, animals were also humanity's link to the universe, and the painting's large circular forms suggest the orbiting sun, moon (in eclipse at the lower left), and earth. The geometries of I and the Village are inspired by the broken planes of Cubism, but Chagall's is a personalized version. As a boy he had loved geometry: "Lines, angles, triangles, squares," he would later recall, "carried me far away to enchanting horizons." Conversely, in Paris he used a disjunctive geometric structure to carry him back home. Where Cubism was mainly an art of urban avant-garde society, I and the Village is nostalgic and magical, a rural fairy tale: objects jumble together, scale shifts abruptly, and a woman and two houses, at the painting's top, stand upside-down. "For the Cubists," Chagall said, "a painting was a surface covered with forms in a certain order. For me a painting is a surface covered with representations of things in which logic and illustration have no importance." I and the Village, 1911, Oil on canvas, 6' 3 5/8" x 59 5/8"

4 Paris Through the Window, 1913. Oil on canvas, 53 1/2 x 55 3/4 inches
“If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention.” Paris Through the Window, Oil on canvas, 53 1/2 x 55 3/4 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift, Solomon R. Guggenheim Marc Chagall © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. After Marc Chagall moved to Paris from Russia in 1910, his paintings quickly came to reflect the latest avant-garde styles. In Paris Through the Window, Chagall’s debt to the Orphic Cubism [more] of his colleague Robert Delaunay is clear in the semitransparent overlapping planes of vivid color in the sky above the city. The Eiffel Tower, which appears in the cityscape, was also a frequent subject in Delaunay’s work. For both artists it served as a metaphor for Paris and perhaps modernity itself. Chagall’s parachutist might also refer to contemporary experience, since the first successful jump occurred in Other motifs suggest the artist’s native Vitebsk. This painting is an enlarged version of a window view in a self-portrait painted one year earlier, in which the artist contrasted his birthplace with Paris. The Janus figure in Paris Through the Window has been read as the artist looking at once westward to his new home in France and eastward to Russia. Chagall, however, refused literal interpretations of his paintings, and it is perhaps best to think of them as lyrical evocations, similar to the allusive plastic poetry of the artist’s friends Blaise Cendrars (who named this canvas) and Guillaume Apollinaire. Paris Through the Window, Oil on canvas, 53 1/2 x 55 3/4 inches

5 Here Chagall remembers tsarist soldiers who were billeted with families.
The geometric planes show the influence of the Cubist painters in Paris. The Soldier Drinks (Le Soldat boit), 1911–12. Oil on canvas, 43 x 37 1/4 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Marc Chagall © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Years after Chagall painted The Soldier Drinks he stated that it developed from his memory of tsarist soldiers who were billeted with families during the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese war. The enlisted man in the picture, with his right thumb pointing out the window and his left index finger pointing to the cup, is similar to the two-faced man in Paris Through the Window in that both figuratively mediate between dual worlds—interior versus exterior space, past and present, the imaginary and the real. In paintings such as these it is clear that the artist preferred the life of the mind, memory, and magical Symbolism [more] over realistic representation. The Soldier Drinks (Le Soldat boit), 1911–12. Oil on canvas, 43 x 37 1/4 inches

6 The fiddler was a vital presence in ceremonies and festivals.
The Chabad Hasidim believed it possible to achieve communion with God through music and dance. The fiddler was a vital presence in ceremonies and festivals. What techniques does Chagall use to make the violinist the focal point of this painting? Green Violinist (Violiniste), 1923–24. Oil on canvas, 78 x 42 3/4 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift, Solomon R. Guggenheim Marc Chagall © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. In Green Violinist Chagall evoked his homeland. The artist’s nostalgia for his own work was another impetus in creating this painting, which is based on earlier versions of the same subject. His cultural and religious legacy is illuminated by the figure of the violinist dancing in a rustic village. The Chabad Hasidim of Chagall’s childhood believed it possible to achieve communion with God through music and dance, and the fiddler was a vital presence in ceremonies and festivals (births, weddings, funerals). Jennifer Blessing What techniques does the artist use to make the violinist the focal point of the painting? Size - larger by far than anything else in the painting. Color – vivid purple, green, and orange. The rest of the painting is very neutral. Placement – central. Green Violinist (Violiniste), 1923–24. Oil on canvas, 78 x 42 3/4 inches

7 The White Curcifixion, 1938. oil on canvas, 60 ¾ x 55 inches.
Here symbols of Jewish suffering surround a Crucifix. How is this painting different from The Green Violinist? How is it similar? The White Curcifixion was painted in It was Chagall’s reaction to the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people. Some Jews were offended by his use of Christian imagery but Chagall saw Jesus, who was also a Jew, as a symbol of all suffering Jews. Around the cebntral figure of the curcified Christ, CHagall has painted a viriety of scenes that show Jewish suffering. A Village is attached and burned by Nazi soldiers; all around are frightened, fleeing, or lamenting Jewish figures. A wandering Jew clutching a Torah symbolizes the homeless Jews. A burning Torah. In the early 1930’s, Chagall had traveled around Europe and seen many paintings by the Old Masters, for whom the curcifixion was a standard subject. By borrowing a central image from traditional Christian art, Chagall might be indicating that the persecution of the Jews is a universal outrage that affects everyone, regardless of their religion or race. Nazi anti-Semitism afftected Chagall personally. All of his works were removed from German museums and in 1937 – the year in which Chagall became a Frenmch citizen – three of them were shown in the Nazis’ Degenerate Art exhibition. The White Curcifixion, oil on canvas, 60 ¾ x 55 inches.

8 Around Her, 1945, oil on canvas, 51 ½ x 43 inches.
This deeply personal remembrance of his wife Bella was painted more than nine months after her death. Can you identify symbols of grief? Of hope? On September 2, 1944, Bella died suddenly in New York of an infection. Chagall was devastated. “Everything has grown dark before my eyes,” he wrote. Their daughter, Ida, brought him to live with her at her New York apartment. He turned his canvases to the wall, and for nine months painted nothing. Eventually Chagall moved back into his own home and began to work again. He was painting Around Her when he met Virginia Haggard McNeil, whom Ida had arranged to be his housekeeper. The two gradually fell in love and were together for seven years. They had a son, David, but their relationship was not known about publicly until after Chagall’s death. His works of this period are dedicated to love and the joy of life, wit curved, sinuous figures Around Her, 1945, oil on canvas, 51 ½ x 43 inches.