Chagall in the shtetl
by Joy Neumeyer
Marc Chagall: The
Origins of the Master’s Creative Language
Until Sept. 30 at the
State Tretyakov Gallery, engineering building, 12 Lavrushinsky Per., m.
Tretyakovskaya, www.tretyakovgallery.ru
Open Tue.-Sun. 10
am-7:30 pm, closed Mon; ticket office closes at 6:30 pm
Marc Chagall’s
fantastical canvases— with their floating fiddlers, two-faced cats and
explosions of color—are instantly recognizable, and uniquely beloved. But where
did these visions come from?
The State Tretyakov
Gallery endeavors to answer this question with an anticipated new exhibition in
honor of the artist’s 125th birthday. It displays dozens of rare early graphics
and paintings from his youth in Belarus, as well as mature collages,
illustrations and ceramics from the 1960s and ’70s, allowing viewers to trace
the motifs that Chagall would continue developing until his death at age 97.
“Regardless of when
his works were created, in youth or in old age, he drew on the same sources,”
Chagall’s granddaughter Meret Meyer said at the exhibition opening.
Chagall was born
Moishe Shagal in 1887 near Vitebsk, Belarus. Under the Russian Empire, Vitebsk was part of the “Pale of Settlement,” which
relegated Russian Jews to specific areas in Eastern Europe.
He grew up in a shtetl, or small Jewish settlement; his father hauled barrels
for a herring merchant, and his mother sold groceries.
After studying art in
St. Petersburg, he arrived in Paris in 1910. His mystical visions of shtetl
life contrasted starkly with the city’s then-dominant Cubism, leaving him
excluded from artists’ circles but attracting interest from poets such as
Guillaume Apollinaire. After fleeing to the United
States in 1941, he returned to France after the war, remaining
there for the rest of his life.
The Tretyakov’s first
major Chagall exhibition, the popular “Hello, Motherland,” was held in 2005.
According to curator Yekaterina Seleznyova, the current show is a continuation
of the past one, presenting graphics and early works that were previously left
out.“It’s impossible to present a complete, exhaustive exhibition of Chagall
all at once,” she said.
Seleznyova said the
focus on Chagall’s roots stemmed from responses to the 2005 show.
“Of course there were
many positive reviews and thanks, but there were also very many questions,” she
said.
“Some of them were
simple – ‘Why is there a green goat in the painting, or a person with a yellow
face?’ But there were also more complicated questions about his persistent
motifs.” Some of the answers can be found in rarely seen graphic works from the
artist’s youth in Vitebsk.
Drawings, watercolors and gouache paintings from the early 1900s depict
everyday scenes of shtetl life. People attend weddings, play street music, put
out fires and gather for meals, highlighting the warmth and community that
could flourish amidst the poverty of the shtetl. The most intimate works, on
loan from Chagall’s descendants, depict moments from the artist’s family life,
such as his grandmother sweeping or taking a nap.
“The exhibition gives
the strong impression that we’re seeing, in essence, his diary,” Seleznyova
said.
To help viewers
explore Chagall’s formative influences, there are real-life artifacts from
Eastern European shtetls, on loan from St. Petersburg’s
Ethnographic Museum
and the Museum of Jewish History in Moscow. Next to a painting of a family
gathered around a baby carriage, for example, visitors see a real carriage from
the same time. Other period objects on display include suitcases, Torahs,
menorahs and hair clippers.
Chagall’s work was
far from static. He became increasingly enamored with color, as ref lected in
vibrant paintings and collages from the 1960s and ’70s. (The works, which were
studies for murals at New York’s Lincoln Center
and Metropolitan Opera, are being shown for the first time in Russia.) He
also incorporated images from other life experiences, from youthful Parisian
nights to his late-in-life rural retreat in Provence.
But he would never
abandon the themes of his childhood village, which was decimated during World
War II. In one bold red collage from 1966, for example, there appears the
familiar figure of a man playing a fiddle, looking straight from Chagall’s
sketches of turn-of-the-century Vitebsk.
Other notable works
in the exhibition include Chagall’s Bible illustrations, with their richly
colored renditions of Old Testament characters, and black-and-white designs for
Gogol’s “Dead Souls.” The latter inspired the book’s first French translation
in 1925. Other rare treats are the 69-piece wedding service Chagall created for
his daughter Ida’s marriage in 1951, which Chagall’s granddaughter recalled
eating borshch from, and two marble fountain sculptures from 1964.
Compared to the 2005
blockbuster, the exhibition is a small one. But the intimate scale is a
refreshing approach to Chagall’s enormous creative output, which spanned most
of the 20th century.
According to Meyer,
the Tretyakov show “sheds a special light on Chagall’s work.”
“In this exhibition
you can hear a certain musicality, which comes directly from the artist’s
soul.”