Chagall. Sylvie Forestier
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the point that even the establishment of, for example, a chronology of the artist’s works, is problematic.
The Artist’s Sister (Mania)
1909
Oil on canvas, 93 × 48 cm
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
In fact, Chagall refused to date his paintings or dated them a posteriori.
A good number of his paintings are therefore dated only approximately and to this, we must add the problems caused to Western analysts by the absence of comparative sources and, very often, by a poor knowledge of the Russian language.
Sabbath
1910
Oil on canvas, 90 × 98 cm
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
Therefore, we can only welcome such recent works as that of Jean-Claude Marcadé who, following the pioneers Camilla Gray and Valentina Vassutinsky-Marcadé, has underlined the importance of the original source – Russian culture – for Chagall’s work. One must rejoice even more in the publications of contemporary art historians such as Alexander Kamensky and Mikhail Guerman with whom we now have the honour and pleasure of collaborating.
The Wedding
1910
Oil on canvas, 98 × 188 cm
Collection of the artist’s family, France
Yet, Marc Chagall has inspired a prolific amount of literature. The great names of our time have written about his work: from the first serious essay by Efros and Tugendhold, The Art of Marc Chagall, published in Moscow in 1918 when Chagall was only 31, to Susan Compton’s erudite and scrupulous catalogue, Chagall, which appeared in 1985, the year of the artist’s death.
The Butcher
1910
Gouache on paper, 34 × 24 cm
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
On the occasion of the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, there has been no lack of critical studies, but all this does not make easy our perception of Chagall’s art. The interpretation of his works – now linking him with the Ecole de Paris, now with the Expressionist movement, now with Surrealism – seems to be full of contradictions.
Jewish Wedding
1910s
Pen and Indian ink on paper mounted on cardboard
20.5 × 30 cm
Z. Gordeyeva Collection, St. Petersburg
Does Chagall totally defy historical or aesthetic analysis? In the absence of reliable documents – some of which were clearly lost as a result of his travels, there is a danger that any analysis may become sterile. This peculiarity by which the painter’s art seems to resist any attempt at theorization or even categorization is moreover reinforced by a complementary observation.
Birth of a Child
1911
Oil on canvas, 65 × 89.5 cm
Collection of the artist’s family, France
The greatest inspiration, the most perceptive intuitions are nourished by the words of poets or philosophers. Words such as those of Cendrars, Apollinaire, Aragon, Malraux, Maritain or Bachelard… Words which clearly indicate the difficulties inherent in all attempts at critical discourse, as Aragon himself underlined in 1945: “Each means of expression has its limits, its virtues, its inadequacies.
Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers
1911
Oil on canvas, 128 × 107 cm
Royal Collection, The Hague
Nothing is more arbitrary than to try to substitute the written word for drawing, for painting. That is called Art Criticism, and I cannot in good conscience be guilty of that.” Words which reveal the fundamentally poetic nature of Chagall’s art itself. Even if the arbitrariness of critical discourse appears to be even more pronounced in the case of Chagall, should we renounce any attempt at clarifying, if not the mystery of his work, then at least his plastic experience and pictorial practice?
I and the Village
1911
Oil on canvas, 191.2 × 150.5 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Should we limit ourselves to a mere lyrical effusion of words with regard to one of the most inventive individuals of our time? Should we abandon research of his aesthetical order, or on the contrary persist in believing that his aesthetic lies in the intimate and multiform life of ideas, in their free and at times contradictory exchange?
The Violonist
1911
Oil on canvas, 94.5 × 69.5 cm
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
If this last is the necessary pre-requisite of all advance in thought, then the critical discourse on Chagall can be enriched by new knowledge contributed by the works in Russian collections which have up to now remained unpublished, by archives which have been brought to light and by the testimony of contemporary historians.
The Poet (Half Past Three)
1911
Oil on canvas, 197 × 146 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA
The comparison gives us a deeper comprehension of this wild art that exhausts any attempt to tame it despite efforts to conceptualize it. About 150 paintings and graphic pieces by Chagall are analysed here by the sensitive pen of the author. They were all produced between 1906–1907 – Woman with a Basket – and 1922, the year in which Chagall left Russia for good, with the exception of several later works, Nude Astride a Cockerel (1925), Time is a River without Banks (1930–1939) and Wall-clock with a Blue Wing (1949).
The Yellow Room
1911
Oil on canvas, 84 × 112 cm
Private collection, courtesy Christie’s, London
The corpus of works presented provides a chronological account of the early period of creativity. The author’s analysis stresses with unquestionable relevance the Russian cultural sources on which Chagall’s art fed. It reveals the memory mechanism which lies at the heart of the painter’s practice and outlines a major concept. It is tempting to say a major “tempo”, that of time-movement perceptible in the plastic structure of Chagall’s oeuvre.
Still-Life with Lamp
1910
Oil