And so March arrived

And so March arrived. I could drag my feet all I wanted, but time indifferently marched onward, bringing with it my inevitable 26th birthday packaged with all the sales tags of a full-price adult in French society. We had one last weekend of the fabulous six-month Museum Challenge, and we decided to go out in style. Rather than just riding the wave of free standard museum admissions, we cashed in on my final youth discount for a newly opened Chagall exposition in the Luxembourg Museum.

Chagall in a glance. Clockwise from top left: 1. Au dessus de Vitebsk (Above Vitebsk), 1915-20; 2. Le Rêve (The Dream), 1927; 3. La Guerre (The War), 1943; 4. Upper section of Esquisse pour Les Toits Rouges (Sketch for the Red Roofs), 1953; 5. Paysage, fait à Cranberry Lake (Countryside, done at Cranberry Lake), 1944; 6. Le Monstre de Notre Dame (The Monster of Notre Dame), 1953; 7. Le Cheval Rouge (The Red Horse), 1938-44

Chagall, who I first discovered on the ceiling of Paris's Opéra Garnier, is one of my favorite artists but someone about whom I quickly realized I knew surprisingly little. And there's a lot to know, since he had quite a full life, from 1887 until 1985. For one, this guy was *not* French. Okay, eventually he became French, but he only made it there after riding out two world wars, one in his home country of Russia and then another in New York, a very lucky place for him to take refuge given that he was also a Jew, a fact which plays a large role in his overall body of work but of which I'd been completely unaware. (Most of the works I'd previously known were fantastical works from his later life featuring familiar Parisian landmarks.)

Surprisingly Chagall: L'Homme à la Barbe (The Bearded Man), 1911, an amusing shout out to his Jewish roots

Unlike many in his profession, Chagall had one true love in life, his first wife Bella. Chagall met Bella in Russia and they became engaged before he left for three years to study in Paris before WWI. During a return trip in 1914, the declaration of war got him stuck in Russia for eight years, but he was with his Bella whom he soon married. His art began featuring Bella as well as themes of war, Judaism, and his home country of Russia, but his style was not yet what I think of today as classic Chagall. His early style uses fewer, stronger colors and has a less whimsical feel, like in this painting, Au dessus de Vitebsk (Above Vitebsk), 1915-20. 

Au dessus de Vitebsk (Above Vitebsk), 1915-20, painted while Chagall was back in his hometown of Vitebsk during WWI

It was only after the first world war when Chagall moved his family to France that he started to approach his classic surrealist, magical style, as you can see in Le Rêve (The Dream), 1927.

Le Rêve (The Dream), 1927, in which Chagall is still beginning his exploration of the magical

Sadly, Bella died more than forty years before Chagall in 1944 while still in exile in New York. (By this time, Chagall was already earning international acclaim for his art.) In 1945, he entered into a seven-year romance with Virginia Haggard, but his art clearly reflected his ongoing suffering over the loss of Bella. This mourning molded his ongoing theme of loss and bewilderment begun with his representations of the suffering of his people in Europe during WWII. Bella and his loss are a recurrent theme throughout much of his later works.

La Guerre (The War), 1943

Le Cheval Rouge (The Red Horse), 1938-44

Chagall was never perfectly at home in New York, not even knowing English when he first arrived, but wikipedia notes (cited from Baal-Teshuva's Chagall biography) that he felt very comfortable wandering through the Lower East Side. I love imagining a lost man wandering through a strange new city finding such a gem as a little pocket of home in a foreign world. And though his heart yearned for France, he got to like his temporary home. I got a kick out of what Chagall had to say about Americans, also taken from Baal-Teshuva via wikipedia:

I like America and the Americans... people there are frank. It is a young country with the qualities and faults of youth. It is a delight to love people like that... Above all I am impressed by the greatness of this country and the freedom that it gives.

Finally, in 1949, Chagall returned to France where he continued to experience great success and worldwide recognition during his lifetime. (I always find it tragic when great artists aren't discovered until after their death.)

Le Monstre de Notre Dame (The Monster of Notre Dame), 1953

In 1952, his daughter introduced him to a Russian Jew, Valentina Brodsky, whom he married that year. Going to show that you're never too old to try something new, Chagall began designing and creating stained glass windows when he was already in his seventies. He made the windows for a synagogue in Jerusalem, for churches in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and even for the UN building. In 1963, he spent a year painting the opera ceiling through which I was first introduced to his work. He also experimented with ceramics, sculpture, theater sets, and tapestries.

Chagall pursued his passion until the very end, dying during the last stages of fabrication of his final tapestry. What a wonderfully full and extraordinary life experience. Despite having seen much depravity and experienced great loss, he also knew how to appreciate and celebrate the beauty in life. To leave you and this Museum Challenge on that note, here's one more of his works, Chagall's 1964 Esquisse pour La Vie, or Sketch for Life.

Esquisse pour La Vie (Sketch for Life), 1964