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| Marc Chagall Zbigniew Kresowaty, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons |
If an artist is given a free-choice to make a home, he or she would catch the first available flight to Paris. Marc Chagall did the same.
Marc Chagall's local life made him running away from the environment and he lived in Paris.
Born in Russia, Chagall had lived the best of his years in France. His incidental stays in Berlin and St. Petersburg and other cities in the surround gave him the opportunity to blend his style of painting giving an east European tilt. However, he would not follow the logic of the pictorial representation of the objects. His paintings were influenced by his emotional and poetic nexus.
Chagall, himself being of Jewish origin, had a deep liking for Jewish Folk-culture that he depicted in his paintings. He lived a long life of almost a century (1887 – 1985), the environment held him and moulded his artistic outputs. His commissioned works for UNO and Cathedrals are like the treasure of the art-world. Chagall's illustrations done for literary books and Bible are also memorable art-pieces he had produced.
The Russian rule prevailing in
the town of Vitebsk in which Chagall passed his childhood disallowed
Jewish children to study in schools. When Chagall told her mother that “I want
to be a painter, she could hardly figure out what he actually meant. But
his first teacher and a realist painter Yehuda (Yuri) Pen could understand what
the budding artist meant.
Pen realised the sense of discipline Chagall had in work and the young man’s capacity to understand the value and meaning of the colours. He would not charge him a single penny for the training he imparted to Chagall.
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| Marc Chagall Ken and Nyetta, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Marc Chagall Painting in the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon |
Marc Chagall’s Style of Paintings: If we imagine Chagall standing surrounded by the galleries, he would
see the world’s most remarkable paintings done in the style of cubism, fauvism
and symbolism.
It was the time when Paris was zooming with modernist artists
like Picasso and his contemporaries. Chagall interlaced all of these styles of
paintings to use them for weaving his own canvases.
In Paris, Chagall had ample opportunities to get merged in the ocean of
modernity of the art. The ocean was created by Picasso, Matisse and Braque. Chagall contributed to it
partially. While developing his highly original style, he blended most of the
elements of traditional Jewish culture with the technique of modern
art. This mixture embedded elegance into his paintings, making him known
as a cross- country artists.
Symbolism in Chagall's Art: Had there been no symbolic message in an art-piece, there is no use of painting the same: this is what most great artists believed. And that is the real reason why the work of any artist should not
be taken on its face value. Artist like Chagall would inject
symbols to give a message to the world through his paintings. The act of symbolism can be dependent on anything: the environment, the religion or the
tastes of an artist. No artist's work can remain untouched by the events
happening in his or her personal life. It is a well-known fact that Chagall had
lived a life of chaos. He was forced to flee to Paris first and then to New
York.
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| The Jewish Museum NY, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Chagall Exhibition at The Jewish Museum New York |
The war had played such
havoc in his career. On his artistic mind, this had generated a formative effect. It shaped and nourished
his style of painting, too.
His paintings, for a specific period, narrated
and symbolized the anguish, as he was forced to leave his
homeland first, and then the adopted home. Chagall was a Jew by birth, but the
crucifixion of Christ was the subject he chose for depicting pain and
suffering. The darkness of his colours gives us the message of destructiveness
and acute suffering.
The images Chagall painted were highly innovative. While richly injecting
his canvases with the imaginations, his artistic aim was trying to write a
fresh visual language. And he greatly succeeded in his aim.
In addition to the painting of canvases, Chagall had acquired the skill to paint stained glass. Many artists find it very difficult to paint on the glass surface. Chagall has got several big and famous commissions for the painting to be done on stained glasses. His glass paintings done at the Cathedral of Metz in France and the building of the United Nations in New York are some of his great stained glass paintings.
Chagall's Paintings: With Nostalgic Fervour. Chagall had sweet memories
of the days passed in his home town Vitebsk. He once wrote that. "My
homeland exists only in my soul". This had led his mind choosing the
nostalgic subjects which were based on the places and the events he encountered
in his childhood.
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| Unknown (Mondadori Publishers), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Russian-born French painter Marc Chagall (Moishe Segal) smiling next to his wife Vava Brodsky (Valentina Brodsky). Saint-Paul de Vence, September 1967 |
Assuming his home town as a
personal identity, he wrote that "I did not live with you, but I didn't
have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and
reflection".
That is how the homeland works on us. That was how the aspect of homeland
worked on Chagall.
In one of his famous paintings, I and the Village (1911), that he had
painted after coming to Paris, Chagall had let the flood
of his memories flowing in full swing. Painted in the style of cubism, that he
acquired and accepted as a medium of expression, this painting seems like an
index of the floating images from his past life.
If we look at the transparent spaces in that painting, it reminds us of Chagall's love for the glass painting he would be doing in the coming years. If we look closely at this painting, it depicts the artist's strong desire for security. The face of a man staring at a cow is symbolic, as the cow is considered a symbol of security in the villages. The houses in the backyard are similar to the homes he had left far behind in his homeland Vitebsk.
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