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Chagall
The life and work of artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) are presented in this volume. He was born into a poor Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russia, a place whose memory remained a constant source of inspiration. Establishing his reputation in Paris before the First World War, he spent the years 1914-1922 in Russia, but disillusioned by the Revolution, he returned and made France his home. He was influenced by the Cubists and in turn influenced the Surrealists, but his vision and his style were always his own - a unique blend of imagination, symbolism, fantasy and colour based on his memories. In addition to painting, he became a celebrated printmaker and perhaps the greatest modern master of stained glass.
- GenresArtNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published June 25, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2025
A great introduction to Chagall's work. His work really benefits from the accompanying text, it makes sense of his often seemingly 'random' paintings.
December 21, 2008
Another excellent introduction to a twentieth century artist from Phaidon. It is hard not to compare Chagall with Picasso - near contemporaries who lived to a ripe old age and who basked in near-deification within the international community after the Second World War. Both represented a profoundly syncretic and humanist view of European culture.
Where Picasso experimented with form constantly and then recorded his universe in the light of his personal responses as art for art's sake (even when politically enraged), Chagall's vision remained wholly figurative within one consistent self-created vision from his time growing up in Vitebsk through to his grand European and American commissions in his later years. There are images from the 1900s that would still be recognisable in the 1960s as by the same hand: this could not be said of Picasso.
The two grand old men of European art (perhaps with Matisse as Father to Picasso as Son and Chagall as Holy Ghost) made every effort to retain a personal artistic integrity yet respond to the violent events of their day. If Picasso's political master work was Guernica, Chagall was tormented by war and revolution, and if Picasso recorded his Mistresses in often unrecognisable and ambiguous ways, Chagall expressed his dynamic love for his Bella in ways that exude love through paint on canvas. One played with cubism while the other briefly lived it. One portrayed Paris second only to his beloved remembered Vitebsk, the other was the essence of Parisian art in the 1920s and 1930s. Both took a particularly interest in the circus and acrobatics, in outsiders and contortions.
Chagall is seen, quite rightly as a magical realist but he should also be seen as the great cultural syncretist. He never lost his profound commitment to European Jewish culture before it got perverted by Nazi oppression, Zionism and Wall Street and yet, much to the distaste of many Jews, he would express the suffering of his people as the suffering of all those oppressed by tyranny through, of all things, the crucifixion.
Similarly, his detailed and humane remembering of Russian-Jewish culture before the revolution did not stop him from using his visionary approach to colour and light to meet Christian commissions in stained glass across Europe, including the Parish Church at Tudeley in Kent - http://www.tudeley.org/chagall.html - and Chichester Cathedral in the UK.
He is the artist whose portrayal of the fiddler on the roof has helped define our mental image of shtetl culture. He reminds us, first, that Jewish culture was integral to the blood and soil of Europe and, second, that the Judaeo-Christian tradition could be lively and humane without any necessity of conflict between its two components. Chagall would also have no fear in introducing secular and pagan themes alongside the religious (Picasso tended to introduce only these themes and to avoid the religious). One guesses that he would not have been shy of adding Muslim ones if he had lived in our time.
This book contains (in conformity with the rest of the series) 48 full colour plates. The only regret is that one of these is not the remarkable 'The Praying Jew (Rabbi of Vitebsk)' of 1914, a personal favourite. It is the use of colour that startles, amazing blues and reds and ochres, as well as dreamlike twistings of the human body. He was unique - a last gasp of European traditionalism perhaps but with a remarkable commitment to a distinctive vision of a world now lost. A genius.
Where Picasso experimented with form constantly and then recorded his universe in the light of his personal responses as art for art's sake (even when politically enraged), Chagall's vision remained wholly figurative within one consistent self-created vision from his time growing up in Vitebsk through to his grand European and American commissions in his later years. There are images from the 1900s that would still be recognisable in the 1960s as by the same hand: this could not be said of Picasso.
The two grand old men of European art (perhaps with Matisse as Father to Picasso as Son and Chagall as Holy Ghost) made every effort to retain a personal artistic integrity yet respond to the violent events of their day. If Picasso's political master work was Guernica, Chagall was tormented by war and revolution, and if Picasso recorded his Mistresses in often unrecognisable and ambiguous ways, Chagall expressed his dynamic love for his Bella in ways that exude love through paint on canvas. One played with cubism while the other briefly lived it. One portrayed Paris second only to his beloved remembered Vitebsk, the other was the essence of Parisian art in the 1920s and 1930s. Both took a particularly interest in the circus and acrobatics, in outsiders and contortions.
Chagall is seen, quite rightly as a magical realist but he should also be seen as the great cultural syncretist. He never lost his profound commitment to European Jewish culture before it got perverted by Nazi oppression, Zionism and Wall Street and yet, much to the distaste of many Jews, he would express the suffering of his people as the suffering of all those oppressed by tyranny through, of all things, the crucifixion.
Similarly, his detailed and humane remembering of Russian-Jewish culture before the revolution did not stop him from using his visionary approach to colour and light to meet Christian commissions in stained glass across Europe, including the Parish Church at Tudeley in Kent - http://www.tudeley.org/chagall.html - and Chichester Cathedral in the UK.
He is the artist whose portrayal of the fiddler on the roof has helped define our mental image of shtetl culture. He reminds us, first, that Jewish culture was integral to the blood and soil of Europe and, second, that the Judaeo-Christian tradition could be lively and humane without any necessity of conflict between its two components. Chagall would also have no fear in introducing secular and pagan themes alongside the religious (Picasso tended to introduce only these themes and to avoid the religious). One guesses that he would not have been shy of adding Muslim ones if he had lived in our time.
This book contains (in conformity with the rest of the series) 48 full colour plates. The only regret is that one of these is not the remarkable 'The Praying Jew (Rabbi of Vitebsk)' of 1914, a personal favourite. It is the use of colour that startles, amazing blues and reds and ochres, as well as dreamlike twistings of the human body. He was unique - a last gasp of European traditionalism perhaps but with a remarkable commitment to a distinctive vision of a world now lost. A genius.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews