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Chagall can be enriched by new knowledge contributed by the works in Russian collections which have up to now remained unpublished, by archives which have been brought to light and by the testimony of contemporary historians.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 on canvas, 81 × 45 cm
Courtesy A. Rosengart Gallery, Lucerne
Thus we can much better understand the vivid flourishing of the artist’s work with its cyclical, apparently repetitive (but why?) character, which might be defined as organic and which calls to mind the ontological meaning of creation itself as set out in the writings of Berdiayev.
Russian Village Under the Moon
1911
Oil on canvas, 126 × 104 cm
Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich
This primordial outpouring of creativity which brought the admiration of Cendrars and Apollinaire, this imperious pictorial paganism which dictates its own law to the artist, sets forth an aesthetic and an ethic of predestination which, for our part, we would like to clarify. It is in the immediacy of Chagall’s pictorial practice, in the immediacy of each creative decision that his own identity lies, that he himself is to be found.
Dedicated to My Fiancée
1911
Oil on canvas, 196 × 114.5 cm
Kunstmuseum, Bern
This self-revelation is related to us by Chagall himself. The autobiographical My Life, written in Russian, first appeared in 1931 in Paris, in a French translation by Bella Chagall. Providing us with extremely precious evidence of a whole part of the artist’s life, this text – tender, alert and droll – reveals behind its anecdotal nature the fundamental themes of his work and above all, its problematic character.
Apollinaire
1911
Pencil on paper, 33.5 × 26 cm
Collection of the artist’s family, France
The tale as a whole is not moreover without some evocations of the artist’s biographies studied by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz who set out a typology. From the first lines one’s attention is attracted by a singular phrase: “That which first leaped to my eyes was an angel!” Thus, the first hours of Chagall’s life were registered here specifically in visual terms. The tale begins in the tone of a parable and his life-story could not belong to anyone but a painter.
Study for “The Rain”
1911
Gouache and pencil on cardboard, 22.5 × 30 cm
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Chagall, who recalls the difficulties of his birth, writes: “But above all I was born dead. I did not want to live. Imagine a white bubble which does not want to live. As if it were stuffed with paintings by Chagall.” Thus, was living there perhaps meant to liberate that which lay inside him – painting?
To Russia, Asses and Others
1911–1912
Oil on canvas, 156 × 122 cm
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
The theme of vocation contained within this premonitory dream, the obvious sign of a unique predestination, seems to us to be even more significant in that it determines the events in the artist’s life and gives meaning to his destiny.
Marc Chagall was born into a strict Jewish family for whom the ban on representations of the human figure had the weight of dogma.
Hommage à Apollinaire
1911–1912
Oil on canvas, 109 × 198 cm
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
If one is unaware of the nature of traditional Jewish education, one can hardly imagine the transgressive force, the fever of being which propelled the young Chagall when he flung himself on the journal Niva (Field) to copy from it a portrait of the composer Rubinstein. This education was based on the historic law of Divine Election and covered the religious side of life only.
Le Saoul (The Drinker)
1911–1912
Oil on canvas, 85 × 115 cm
Private collection
