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The Late Work
1948-1985
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The Half-moon Couple
1952
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After his return to France, Chagall's work still
remained a poetic metaphor for his turbulent life history, a balancing
act negotiating dream and reality, an adventure of the imagination
that made the invisible visible and thus real. His late work, however,
seemed gradually to achieve distance from the twin starting-points in
his artistic life, namely, the orthodox Jewish tradition and Russian
folklore.
His subject matter, which was taken from his
cultural knowledge of a small Russian village, was superseded by the
use of motifs from Greek mythology, Christian belief and his own
everyday experience. Thus his choice of subjects underwent a cautious
change and furthermore the content of his repeatedly deployed symbols
was worn away in the course of time. And after 1947 Chagall's links to
avant-garde art increasingly weakened almost to the point of
non-existence, so that his visual terms came to seem a matter of
personal preferences developed over the years, rather than a wish to
maintain connections with the latest formal tendencies in the art
scene.
But it was not only the artistic market place that
Chagall avoided. More and more, he liked to withdraw completely into
his private life, and the turbulence of his earlier life was now a
thing of the past: in 1950 he moved into a house at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat,
and two years later married for the second time. His new beloved was a
Russian woman, Valentina Brodsky, whom Chagall tenderly nicknamed Vava.
This domestic bliss was to be Chagall's touchstone during this period
when his art (and the artist himself) were becoming objects of
mounting public interest.
Despite his growing fame, his pictures nevertheless
remained as intimate and as naively unworldly in his later years as
they had been at the outset. 'Couple on a Red Background'
was
painted as late as 1983. The man, meaning to win over the woman with
tenderness, is placing his arm about the woman's breast, gently
inclining his head, trying to look her in the eye, while she, still
hesitant, is turning away and looking out at us, as if we, by looking
at the scene, were disturbing the couple's loving tryst.
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Couple on a Red Background
1983
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"The habit of ignoring Nature is deeply implanted in
our times. This attitude reminds me of people who never look you in
the eye; I find them disturbing and always have to look away."
MARC CHAGALL
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The red, which veritably glows in the couple, is
matched by a cool blue, and in it, at the right-hand margin, we see
the painter himself with a palette in his left hand. It appears as if
the vase of flowers is slipping from his open arms, just as the book
is being dropped by the lovers. The blue oval echoes the shape of the
palette and the bunch of flowers and the bird are no more than
abstract dabs of paint.
The images in a painting done exactly thirty years
previously, one of a Paris series, are strikingly similar:
once again the heart of the composition is occupied by a loving
couple, once again there is a bird, and the tree to the left is coloured like a bouquet of flowers. However, Chagall is not merely
re-using the same motifs decade after decade; a second parallel
between the 1953 and 1983 paintings can also be established. If the
seemingly abstract shape of the blue area in the later painting is a
larger version of the artist's palette, in the earlier painting we can
make out a comparable suggestion of an outsize heart. The tip touches
the lower margin of the painting; the heart itself is squarely in the
centre of the picture. One diagonal runs to the left into the tree;
first serving to indicate the river and the side of the heart; a
second line crosses the river to the right and, in the upper half of
the painting, is rounded into the typical stylized heart-shape. The
symbol of love embraces a loving couple.
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Le Quai de Bercy
1953 |
"I lived and worked in America during a period of
global tragedy that hit people everywhere. As the years passed by, I
did not grow any younger. But in the atmosphere of hospitable welcome
I was able to draw strength. Without denying the roots of my art."
MARC CHAGALL
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In his late work, Chagall was frequently able to
endow shapes dictated by technical - that is to say, abstract -
reasons with pictorial functions. What seems at first glance to be an
arrangement of lines and zones determined along compositional
principles turns out to be a sign emphasizing the meaning of the
picture, such as the heart. In this way Chagall puts behind him the
ideas of the Cubists and the visual concepts of Delaunay, who had once
influenced him. In earlier days his wish to base a painting wholly on
formal principles, to enmesh it in a purely abstract net, so to speak,
was at odds with his aim to present identifiable objects.
This new function of form as a vehicle of a
painting's content is matched in many works by a newly liberated use
of colour. Slightly late in the day, Chagall took to the kind of
tachiste painting that Jackson Pollock had initiated in 1947 with
his first drip paintings. In 'Bridges over the Seine'. for
instance, the area of blue can no longer be wholly identified with an
object in the composition.
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Bridges over the Seine
1954
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''I do not know (and who can predict?) what
external form or inner character French art will have in the future,
once France has recovered from this horrible tragedy ... I am
convinced that France will again bring forth marvels to follow in the
footsteps of the great masters of the past. Let us all believe in the
genius of France."
MARC CHAGALL
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On the one hand, it fully covers the reclining couple,
yet, on the other, it spreads beyond them and becomes a sort of aura
about the embracing lovers. In this as in all his other paintings
which betray the influence of American abstract expressionism,
Chagall's brush-work is far from spontaneous; it simply reinforces the
impression of naive innocence which Chagall, ever subtle in his
approach, had always called forth in his figures.The theme of colour
grown autonomous is varied in a number of paintings of flowers at this
period, such as 'Le Champ de Mars'. The floral motifs afford
Chagall a welcome opportunity to indulge in masterly craftsmanship: colour values are savoured, tonal qualities painstakingly harmonized
and colour contrasts relished in. These floral elements in the
paintings are havens of pure painting, as it were, surrounded by work
no less delicately painted, but anchored to a greater extent in the
representation of the actual.
A good example of Chagall's use of this new autonomy
of colour as a kind of first aid for those who view his work is 'The
Concert', painted in 1957. A boat with a couple on board is
drifting along a river, with a city on the bank to the right and a
group of musicians to the left. The lovers' naked bodies are shrouded
in a glowing red that extends upwards beyond their heads. Parallel to
this band of colour are two other strips of blue that run from the
water to the musicians. These bands suggest that the boat is moving
from the bottom right to upper left; so this romantic boating trip,
under a full moon, proves in fact to be a voyage from the city cloaked
in cool blue to a higher sphere peopled by heavenly musicians.
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Le Champ de Mars
1955
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The Concert
1957
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The Players
1968
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"God, perspective, colour, the Bible, shapes and
lines, traditions, and all that is called human life - love, security,
the family, school, education, the words of the prophets and life in
Christ - all of it was out of joint. Maybe I too was occasionally
filled with doubts. At such times I painted a topsyturvy world, took
the heads off my figures, divided them up into pieces, and set them
floating about in my pictures somewhere or other."
MARC CHAGALL
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The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and
Notre-Dame show the city to be Paris, the city where Chagall had his
atelier before the war at a time when it was still what it was no
longer to be in the aftermath: a great art metropolis. Like many
fellow artists, Chagall had turned his back on Paris, and the Cite
d'Azur had become a little Montparnasse. It was an apt setting for
Chagall, and he was not to leave the region; indeed, in 1967 he built
a house large enough for his requirements at Saint-Paul-de-Vence. It
contained three studios, one for graphic work, one for drawing, and a
third for painting and large-scale designs.
1950
Not long before this final move he completed work on
'Exodus'. The title alludes to the exodus of the Israelites
from Egypt in 1200 В. С, as recounted in the Old Testament. After
crossing the Red Sea in miraculous manner, Moses, the leader, was
handed down the Ten Commandments. In the painting he is seen standing
at bottom right, holding the tablets with the Commandments, which he
has just received from the hand of God. Beyond him, a vast crowd is
pouring out of the picture's distant depths. These are the people of
Israel on the way to their own land, a story which is told as a
parable in the Bible and which was also historical reality throughout the
Second World War up to the establishment of the State of Israel in
1948. So Chagall sees it - and in the process, in his familiar way, he
mixes up the various historical levels and literary sources.
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Exodus
1952-1966
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Thoughts of flight and exile re-appear in the
painting 'War'. A wretched and drastically overloaded cart is
slowly putting the burning city behind it. A man is plodding along
behind the cart, a sack over his shoulder, saving his worldly goods
from the flames. Most of the people here can only just save their
lives, though, and cling to each other in confused despair. The people
and animals that have remained in the city are helplessly at the mercy
of the all-consuming inferno. Chagall feelingly portrays the
sufferings people underwent during the war, and by adding to this
scenario of cruelty and violence a crucifixion scene in the upper
right he elevates the victims of the war to the status of martyrs, who
- though themselves guiltless - are forced to bear the burden of
expiation.
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War
1964-1966
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Modern history paintings of this order were few, and
they were not so much reflections of precise historical events as
examinations of human suffering; however, Chagall's portraits at this
time were even fewer. His two wives were the only people he honoured
with portraits after he quit Russia. In 1966 he painted Vava,
his chosen one, seated on a chair, her left arm resting on the back.
In front of her float a couple of lovers, presumably
to remove any doubts the wife might have had about her husband's
affection ... In the background we see the painter's traditional
repertoire of Eiffel Tower, a red animal's head, a village street, but
here they suggest the interior of a studio where Vava, Chagall's muse,
is posing in front of the very paintings she inspired him to create.
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Portrait of Vava
1966
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"For me, the circus is a magical show, like a world
that comes into being and then is gone again," declared Chagall,
writing of a world that is very closely related to that of his
paintings and which many of his paintings, such as 'The Large
Circus' and 'The Grand Parade', pay homage to. Boisterous
merriment and music, a show-case of magic and freakish oddities, a
place where laws have ceased to apply - the description is as
applicable to Chagall's pictures as to the world of the circus. When
the painter presents the happy goings-on in the arena, he is expressing in concrete terms the
fantasies that otherwise exist only in his dreams, expressing them in
terms of a corresponding reality. In the big top, a man who can fly is
quite simply a trapeze artiste.
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The Large Circus
1968
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The Grand Parade
1980 |
"Changes in societal structure and in art would
possess more credibility if they had their origins in the soul and
spirit. If people read the words of the prophets with closer
attention, they would find the keys to life.''
MARC CHAGALL
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And in 'The Fall of Icarus', the man who so
wondrously has wings is not a product of the painter's imagination,
but instead derives from Greek myth. Icarus and his father Dedalus
built a flying machine to escape from their imprisonment on the island
of Crete; but the son, rather too impetuously, flew too close to the
sun and the wax that held his wings together melted, so that he lost
them and plummeted into the sea. Chagall's painting re-locates the
scene of the story, so that the mishap now takes place before the
attentive eyes of countless onlookers. The peace of the village is
profoundly disturbed by the historic event. While 'The Fall of Icarus'
is painted in unusually bright colours to emphasize the special role
of the sun in the old tale, in 'The Myth of Orpheus', by
contrast, dark shades predominate. The Greek hero of the myth was
compelled to descend into the Underworld to reclaim his beloved
Eurydice.
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The Fall of Icarus
1975
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The Myth of Orpheus
1977
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Chagall always aimed to create great art, and in
every period of his creative life he approached his self-imposed aim
in a different way. In his late work - apart from a number of
lithographs, such as the famous Bible illustrations (which appeared in
1957) and 'Daphnis and Chloe' (1961) - the major challenge to his
energies was offered by monumental murals, mosaics,
tapestries and
stained-glass windows.
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In rapid succession Chagall undertook the following
commissions (to list only the most important): the interior of the
church of Plateau -d'Assy in Savoy (1957); windows for Metz Cathedral
(beginning in 1958); a mural for the foyer of the theatre in Frankfurt
(1959); windows for the synagogue of the University Clinic in
Jerusalem (1962); windows in the United Nations building in New York,
and windows in
the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, ceiling paintings in the Paris Opera House (1964); murals in Tokyo
and Tel Aviv, and for the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1965);
murals for the new parliament building in Jerusalem (1966); mosaics
for the University of Nice (1968); stained-glass windows for the
Minster of Our Lady in Zurich (1970); windows for the Chagall Museum
in Nice (1971); windows for Reims Cathedral, and mosaics for the First
National Bank in Chicago (1974),
windows at the Art Institute of Chicago
(1977), and windows for St. Stephen's in Mainz
(beginning in 1978).
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"The Four Seasons"
Mosaic by Marc Chagall, beside
First National Bank Building, Downtown Chicago, 1974
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Neither Chagall nor those who gave him his
commissions felt that belonging to a specific religious community need
play a decisive part. The artist used his talents equally for
synagogues and cathedrals. After all, even the Communist Leger had
been allowed to paint a chapel interior! And so had Matisse. When
Chagall viewed the decorations Matisse created for the church at Vence,
though, he felt that they were un-suited to prayer; his own style was
far better for tasks of this nature. It was essential to strike a
universal religious note, and the specific images tended to be of
secondary significance. The windows he made for the church of All
Saints in Tudeley in the county of Kent (England), for example, allude
to the death of a girl only incidentally. The girl had
drowned in an accident at sea and her parents commissioned the windows
and so a private tragedy was heightened, in Chagall's work, by the use
of his usual figures and religious symbols. What most engages the eye,
however, are motifs taken from Nature, and they, together with the
blue that floods everything, achieve the desired mystical mood that
prompts us to contemplation and penitence.
Golda
Meier and Marc Chagall, Jerusalem, 1969
No other twentieth century artist had Chagall's gift
for harmonizing what were thought to be irreconcilable
opposites. He bridged gaps that had been widening for centuries
between different religious communities, ideologies, and not least
artistic ideologies. It was this power to integrate that enabled him
to satisfy the public's longing for one peaceful family of humanity,
one world of brotherly peace. The soothing message was no less than
arcadia, paradise and elysium in one. And Marc Chagall, forever
travelling between different worlds, was the messenger.
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