Marc Chagall (English pronunciation: /ʃəˈɡɑːl/, shə-GAHL[1]; Yiddish Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. It is written in the Hebrew alphabet: מאַרק שאַגאַל; Russian Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or four including Rusyn) living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are: Марк Заха́рович Шага́л; 7 July 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Russian Other Slavic peoples, especially East Slavs –French To be French, according to the first article of the Constitution, is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion . According to its principles, France has devoted herself the destiny of a proposition nation, a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live artist, associated with several key art movements According to theories associated with the concept of postmodernism, art movements were especially important during the period of time corresponding to modern art. The period of time called "modern art" is posited to have ended approximately three-quarters of the way through the twentieth century. During the period of time corresponding and was one of the most successful artists of the twentieth century. He created a unique career in virtually every artistic medium, including paintings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints. Chagall's haunting, exuberant, and poetic images have enjoyed universal appeal, with art critic Robert Hughes Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970 referring to him as "the quintessential Jewish The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos artist of the twentieth century."
As a pioneer of modernism Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term and one of the greatest figurative artists Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork - particularly paintings and sculptures - which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational. The term "figurative art" is often taken to mean art which represents the human figure, or even an animal figure, and, though of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall achieved fame and fortune, and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known paintings of our time. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists." For decades he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist." Using the medium of stained glass The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works made from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings. Although traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims Reims (pronounced /ˈriːmz/ in English and [ʁɛ̃s] in French), a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, lies 129 km (80 miles) east-northeast of Paris and Metz Metz (French pronunciation: [mɛs] ; German: [ˈmɛts]) is a city in the northeast of France, capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. It is located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. The residents of the city are called Messin(e)(s), windows for the United Nations The United Nations Organization or simply United Nations (UN) (Arabic: الأمم المتحدة, French: Organisation des Nations Unies, Chinese: 联合国 / 聯合國, Spanish: Organización de las Naciones Unidas, Russian: Организация Объединённых Наций) Filipino: Organisasyon ng Nagkakaisang mga Bansa is an, and the Jerusalem Jerusalem (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם (help·info), Yerushaláyim (for the meaning, see below); Arabic: القُدس (audio) (help·info), al-Quds Sharif, lit. "The Holy Sanctuary"; Yiddish: ירושלים Yərusholáyəm)[ii] is the capital[iii] of Israel and, if including the area and population of East Jerusalem, its Windows in Israel Israel , officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל (help·info), Medīnat Yisrā'el; Arabic: دَوْلَةُ إِسْرَائِيلَ, Dawlat Isrā'īl), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the. He also did large-scale paintings, including the ceiling for the Paris Opéra The Palais Garnier, also known as the Opéra de Paris or Opéra Garnier, but more commonly as the Paris Opéra, is a 2,200-seat opera house on the Place de l'Opéra in Paris, France. A grand landmark designed by Charles Garnier in the Neo-Baroque style, it is regarded as one of the architectural masterpieces of its time.
His most vital work was made on the eve of World War I, when he traveled between St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg (Russian: Са́нкт-Петербу́рг , tr. Sankt-Peterburg, IPA [ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk]) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd (Russian: Петроград, IPA [pʲɪtrɐˈgrat], 191, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Eastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and even volatile, as there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region". A related UN paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct& Jewish folk culture. He spent his wartime years in Russia, becoming one the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde, founding the Vitebsk Coordinates: 55°11′N 30°10′E / 55.183°N 30.167°E Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city. It is served by Vitebsk Vostochny Airport and Vitebsk air base Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.
He was known to have two basic reputations, writes Lewis – as a pioneer of modernism, and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's golden age in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between, Symbolism Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the movement had its roots in Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire greatly admired and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes, and Fauvism Les Fauves were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907,, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a." Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk." [2] "When Matisse Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments dies", Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish-born painter, draughtsman, and sculptor who lived most of his adult life in France. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is."[3]
Early life and education
Home life
Chagall's ParentsMarc Chagall, born Moishe Shagal, was born in Liozna [4], near the city of Vitebsk Coordinates: 55°11′N 30°10′E / 55.183°N 30.167°E Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city. It is served by Vitebsk Vostochny Airport and Vitebsk air base (Belarus Belarus, (pronounced /bɛləˈruːs/ bel-ə-ROOS; Belarusian: Беларусь, Russian: Беларусь or Белоруссия, Belorussia see Etymology), officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and, then part of the Russian Empire The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was the second largest contiguous empire in world history, surpassed only by the Mongol Empire, and the third largest empire behind the British Empire and the Mongol) in 1887. At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was around 66,000, with half the population being Jewish.[2] A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo Toledo ) is a municipality located in central Spain, 70 km south of Madrid. It is the capital of the province of Toledo. It is also the capital of autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 for its extensive cultural and monumental heritage as one of the former capitals of the Spanish Empire", after the former cultural center of the Spanish Empire Territories of the Portuguese empire during the Iberian Union . Territories lost before or due to the Treaties of Utrecht-Baden (1713–1714). Territories lost before or during the Spanish American wars of independence (1811–1828). Territories lost following the Spanish-American War (1898–1899). Territories granted independence during the. As the city was mostly built of wood, little of it survived three years of Nazi occupation and destruction during World War II.
Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal As a Jewish surname Siegel it could be an acronym of Segan Levi (סגן לוי), meaning "Assistant Levite". It signifies membership in the Hebrew Tribe of Levi (assistants to the Hebrew Priests in Biblical Times) as a Levi of the second rank. It is common among Ashkenazi Jews who are Levites. Alternate Spellings include Segal, Siegal,, which in a Jewish The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos community was usually borne by a Levitic In Jewish tradition, a Levite is a member of the Hebrew tribe of Levi. When Joshua led the Israelites into the land of Canaan, the Levites were the only Israelite tribe that received cities but no tribal land "because the Lord the God of Israel himself is their inheritance" (Deuteronomy 18:2). The Tribe of Levi served particular family.[5] His father Khatskl (Zakhar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant; and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels but earning only 20 roubles a month. Chagall would later include fish motifs "out of respect for his father", writes Chagall biographer, Jacob Baal-Teshuva. Chagall wrote of these early years:
Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the samovar, drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot. . . There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.[6]
During the previous decades, the Jewish population of the town survived numerous government-organized attacks (pogroms A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack, either approved or condoned by government or military authorities, directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centres, property. The term was originally used to denote extensive), prejudice, segregation, and discrimination. As a result, they created their own schools, synagogues, hospitals, a cemetery, and other community institutions. One of their key sources of income was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout Russia. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.[7] Art historian and curator Susan Tumarkin Goodman writes that for religious and economic reasons from the late 1700s to the First World War, Russia confined Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, along its western border, in which permanent residence of Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish residence was generally prohibited. It extended from the pale or demarcation line to the Russian border with Germany and Austria-Hungary, which included sections of modern Ukraine Ukraine (pronounced /juːˈkreɪn/ ew-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ]), with its area of 600,000 sq km, is the second largest country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and, Belarus Belarus, (pronounced /bɛləˈruːs/ bel-ə-ROOS; Belarusian: Беларусь, Russian: Беларусь or Белоруссия, Belorussia see Etymology), officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and, Poland, and the Baltic States The Baltic states (Estonian: Balti riigid, Latvian: Baltijas valstis, Lithuanian: Baltijos valstybės, Russian: Прибалтика lit. "At the Baltic Sea"), Baltic nations or Baltic countries are three countries in Northern Europe, all members of the European Union: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Between 1918 and 1920 in the. This caused the natural creation of Jewish market-villages (shtetls A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls (Yiddish plural: שטעטלעך, shtetlekh) were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania. A larger city,) throughout today's Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and even volatile, as there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region". A related UN paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct&, with their own markets, culture, and religious observances.[8]:14
Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiograhy, My Life. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Vitebsk itself had been a center of that culture dating from the 1730s with its teachings derived from the Kabbalah Kabbalah is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the mystical aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between an eternal and mysterious Creator and the mortal and finite universe (His creation). While it is heavily used by some denominations, it is not a denomination in and of. Goodman describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:
Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society. . . . Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew חסידות -Chasidut in Sephardi Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith. It was founded in 18th Century Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.[8]:14
Art education
In Russia at that time Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities due to policies of discrimination. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s and the Bible. At the age of 13 his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.[6]
Portrait of Chagall by Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, his first art teacher in VitebskA turning point in his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white." Chagall would later say how there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally foreign to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it." He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.[7]
He eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical", writes Goodman. The young Chagall explained, "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, a realist artist who also ran a small drawing school in Vitebsk, which included future luminaries as El Lissitzky Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (Russian: Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий) (November 23 [O.S. November 11] 1890 – December 30, 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лиси́цкий, Yiddish: על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an and Ossip Zadkine. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his desires.[7]
Artistic inspirations
Goodman notes that during this period in Russia, Jews had two basic alternatives for joining the art world: One was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots", by moving away from any public expressions of Jewishness, in order to avoid the discrimination endemic in Russian society. The other alternative — the one that Chagall chose — was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into his art. For Chagall, this was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle."[8]:14
Chagall biographer Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art."[9] Lewis adds, "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers. . . . [with] scenes of childhood so indelibly in one's mind and to invest them with an emotional charge so intense that it could only be discharged obliquely through an obsessive repetition of the same cryptic symbols and ideograms . . . "[2]
Years later, at the age of 57 while living in America, Chagall confirmed this when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":
Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? . . . You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city—in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. . . You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying,' he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." . . . I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.[10]:91
Art career
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... paintings artists such as Georges Braque, Marc Chagall , Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro, as well as sculpture by Constantin Brancusi and Alexander Calder. ...
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everydaysacredlife
Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:18:00 GM
Marc Chagall. 2 weeks ago; We need ritual. When emotions are almost unbearable, we need to find a container, a way to experience them & release them into the world. 1 month ago; It's play that restores aliveness and joy. ...
