Jewogle - Marc Chagall (משה שאגאל)

Biography:

Marc Chagall (Yiddish: מאַרק שאַגאַל‎; Russian: Марк Захарович Шага́л Mark Zaharovic Sagal; Belarusian: Мойша Захаравіч Шагалаў Mojša Zaharavič Šagałaŭ) (7 July 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a French painter of Russian-Jewish origin who was born in Belarus, at that time part of the Russian Empire. He is associated with the modern movements after impressionism.

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal (משה שאגאל - Shagal is a dialectal, North-Eastern Yiddish variant of the surname "Segal", an acronym of סגן לוי Segan Levi, meaning "Assistant Levite"); his name was rendered in the Russian language as Mark Zakharovich Shagalov. Chagall was born in Liozno, near Witebsk, Russian Empire (now in Belarus), the eldest of nine children in the close-knit Jewish family led by his father, a herring merchant Khatskl (Zakhar) Shagal, and his mother, Feige-Ite. This period of his life, described as happy though impoverished, appears in references throughout Chagall's work.

After he began studying painting in 1906 under famed local artist Yehuda Pen, Chagall moved to St. Petersburg some months later, in 1907. There he joined the school of the "Society of Art Supporters" and studied under Nikolai Roerich, encountering artists of every school and style. From 1908-1910 Chagall studied under Leon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting.

This was a difficult period for Chagall; at the time, Jewish residents were only allowed to live in St. Petersburg with a permit, and the artist was jailed for a brief period for an infringement to this restriction. Despite this, Chagall remained in St. Petersburg until 1910, and regularly visited his home town where, in 1909, he met his future wife, Bella Rosenfeld.

After gaining a reputation as an artist, Chagall left St. Petersburg to settle in Paris to be near the burgeoning art community in the Montparnasse district, where he developed friendships with such avant-garde luminaries as Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger. In 1914, he returned to Vitebsk and, a year later, married his fiancée, Bella. While in Russia, World War I erupted and, in 1916, the Chagalls had their first child, a daughter they named Ida.

Chagall became an active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although the Soviet Ministry of Culture made him a Commissar of Art for the Vitebsk region, where he founded an art school, he did not fare well politically under the Soviet system. He and his wife moved to Moscow in 1920 and then back to Paris three years later, in 1923. During this period, Chagall published his memoirs in Yiddish, which were originally written in Russian and translated into French by Bella Chagall. He also wrote articles, poetry and memoirs in Yiddish, published mainly in newspapers (and only posthumously in book-form). Chagall became a French citizen in 1937.

With the Nazi occupation of France during World War II and the deportation of Jews, the Chagalls fled Paris, seeking asylum at Villa Air-Bel in Marseille, where the American journalist Varian Fry assisted in their escape from France through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in the United States of America.

On September 2, 1944, Chagall's beloved Bella, the constant subject of his paintings and companion of his life, died from an illness. Two years later, in 1946, he returned to Europe. By 1949 he was working in Provence, in the South of France. That same year, Chagall took part in the creation of the MRAP anti-racist NGO.

The depression Chagall experienced following Bella's death was alleviated when he met Virginia Haggard, with whom he had a son, David (McNeil). At this time, Chagall received financial aid from theatrical commissions and, in his painting, rediscovered a free and vibrant use of color. His works of this period are dedicated to love and the joy of life, with curved, sinuous figures. He also began to work in sculpture, ceramics, and stained glass.

Chagall remarried in 1952 to Valentina Brodsky (whom he called "Vava"). He traveled several times to Greece, and in 1957 visited Israel, where in 1960 he created stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem and in 1966, wall art for the new parliament being constructed in that city. During the Six Day War the hospital came under severe attack, placing Chagall's work under threat. In response to this, Chagall famously wrote a letter from France stating "I am not worried about the windows, only about the safety of Israel. Let Israel be safe and I will make you lovelier windows.". Luckily, most of the panels were removed in time, with only one sustaining severe damage.

At the age of 97, Chagall died in Saint-Paul de Vence, France on March 28, 1985 and was buried at the local cemetery. His plot is located in the most westerly aisle upon entering the cemetery.

Art:

Chagall took inspiration from Belarusian folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes that reflected his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall engaged in a series of large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings.

Chagall's artworks are difficult to categorize. Working in the pre-World War I Paris art world, he was involved with avant-garde currents, however, his work was consistently on the fringes of popular art movements and emerging trends, including Cubism and Fauvism, among others. He was closely associated with the Paris School and its exponents, including Amedeo Modigliani.

Abounding with references to his childhood, Chagall's work has also been criticized for slighting some of the turmoil which he experienced. He communicates happiness and optimism to those who view his work strictly in terms of his use of highly vivid colors. Chagall often posed himself, sometimes together with his wife, as an observer of a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see The White Crucifixion, which is rich with intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and the oppression of Jews in general.

Select Artworks:

Young Woman on a Sofa (Mariaska), 1907, (Private collection)
The Wedding, 1910
The Birth, 1910, Kunsthaus Zürich
I and the Village, 1911, New York, Museum of Modern Art
Adam and Eve, 1912
Paris through the window, 1913, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, 1913, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
The Violinist, 1911–1914, Düsseldorf, Germany, Kunstsammlung NRW
The Birthday, 1915, New York, Museum of Modern Art
Bella with White Collar, 1917
The Blue House, 1917–1920
The Tailor, 1922
The Fall of the Angels, 1923–1947, Kunstmuseum Basel
Green Violinist, 1923–1924, Guggenheim Museum
Dream Village, 1929, San Antonio, TX, McNay Art Museum
The Female Acrobat, 1930, Paris, Musée National d´Art Moderne
Solitude, 1933, Tel Aviv Museum
Midsummer Night's Dream, 1939
The Red Rooster, 1940, Cincinnati Art Museum
Madonna with sleighs, 1947, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
La Mariée (The Bride), 1950 — featured in the 1999 film Notting Hill
Lovers in the Red Sky, 1950
Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law, 1950–1952
The Green Night, 1952
The Bastille, 1953
Bridge over the Seine, 1954, Hamburger Kunsthalle
Champ de mars, 1954–1955, Museum Folkwang, Essen
The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1955
Commedia dell'arte, 1959 (Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, Foyer)
Self-portrait, 1959–1960
King David, 1961
Ceiling of the Garnier Opera, 1964
Exodus, 1952–1966
War, 1964–1966, Kunsthaus Zürich
Mosaic murals in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1966
Stage settings for Die Zauberflöte, Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1967
Biblical-themed windows, 1968, Metz Cathedral
The Prophet Jeremiah, 1968
Job, 1975
Biblical Message, 17 Works (Nice, Musée National)
America Windows, 1977, Art Institute of Chicago
The Yellow Donkey, 1979
Biblical-themed windows, 1974, Reims Cathedral
Family, (1975–1976)
Nine biblical-themed windows in luminous blue, 1978–1985, St. Stephan Church, Mainz, Germany
The Great Parade, 1979–1980, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York.
The White Crucifixion 1938
The Jerusalem Windows
Four Seasons, 1974, Chase Tower, Chicago, Illinois
Scene de Cirque, 1980
The Yellow Crucifixion 1943

Use of symbolism:

Cow: life par excellence: milk, meat, leather, horn, power.
Tree: another life symbol.
Cock: fertility, often painted together with lovers.
Bosom (often naked): eroticism and fertility of life (Chagall loved and respected women).
Fiddler: in Chagall's town Vitebsk the fiddler made music at crosspoints of life (birth, wedding, death).
Herring (often also painted as a flying fish): commemorates Chagall's father working in a fish factory.
Pendulum Clock: time, and modest life (in the time of prosecution at the Loire River the pendulum seems being driven with force into the wooden box of the pendulum clock).
Candlestick: two candles symbolize the Shabbat or the Menorah (candlestick with seven candles) or the Hanukkah-candlestick, and therefore the life of pious Jews (Chassidim).
Windows: Chagall's Love of Freedom, and Paris through the window.
Houses of Vitebsk (often in paintings of his time in Paris): feelings for his homeland.
Scenes of the Circus: Harmony of Man and Animal, which induces Creativity in Man.
Crucifixion of Jesus: an unusual subject for a Jewish painter, and likely a response to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany in the late 1930s.
Horses: Freedom.
The Eiffel Tower: Up in the sky, freedom.

Exhibitions:

Chagall's work is housed in a variety of locations, including the Palais Garnier (the old opera house), the Chase Tower Plaza of downtown Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the cathedral of Metz, France, Notre-Dame de Reims, the Fraumünster abbey in Zürich, Switzerland, the Church of St. Stephan in Mainz, Germany and the delightful Biblical Message museum in Nice, France, that Chagall helped to design.

The only church with a complete set of Chagall window-glass is locared in the tiny village of Tudeley, in Kent, England. Chagall painted 12 colorful stained-glass windows in Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, with each frame depicting a different tribe.

At the Lincoln Center in New York City, Chagall's huge mosaic murals are installed in the lobby of the new Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. Also in New York, the United Nations Headquarters has a stained glass wall of his work. In 1967 the UN commemorated this artwork with a postage stamp and souvenir sheet.

In 1973, the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall (Chagall Museum) opened in Nice, France. The museum in Vitebsk which bears his name was founded in 1997, in the building where his family lived on 29 Pokrovskaia street, although, prior to his death, years before the fall of the Soviet Bloc, Chagall was persona non grata in his homeland. The museum only has copies of his work.

Tributes:

Jon Anderson, singer from the popular group Yes, met Chagall in the town of Opio, France as a young musician. Jon credits him as a seminal inspiration. He has recorded a piece of musicin his honor, as well as the charitable Opio Foundation which he established in memory of his connection with the artist. In 1997, Pasqualina Azzarello painted A Celebration of Imagination: a Tribute to Marc Chagall, a 15'x30' public mural in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 2005, musician Tori Amos recorded and released the composition "Garlands," with lyrics inspired by a series of Chagall lithographs. In 2006, the musical group The Weepies released their album Say I Am You. One of the tracks is titled "Painting by Chagall"; part of the chorus is: "...we float like two lovers in a painting by Chagall, all around is sky and blue town, holding these flowers for a wedding gown, we live so high above the ground..." "Do Jump!", a physical theatre based in Portland, Oregon, created an acrobatic/trapeze theatre performance in tribute to Chagall.

Quotations:

"All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."
"Great art picks up where nature ends."
"I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension."
"I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment."
"If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste."
"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."
"My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent."
"Will God or someone give me the power to breathe my sigh into my canvases, the sigh of prayer and sadness, the prayer of salvation, of rebirth?"
"Will there be anymore!"
"We all know that a good person can be a bad artist. But no one will ever be a genuine artist unless he is a great human being and thus also a good one."
"Only love interest me, and I am only in contact with things I love."