Chagall, between war and peace.
NMR| N° d'inventaire | 16725 |
| Format | 23 x 26 |
| Détails | 175 p., color reproductions, hardcover. |
| Publication | Paris, 2013 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782711860883 |
Chagall is one of the rare 20th-century artists to have been both a painter who bore witness to his time and the builder of a world outside of it, made of dreams and fantasy. The exhibition presents these two aspects of his work. 1914: Chagall leaves Paris after spending three years there. The paintings he produces then become more documentary. He seems to renounce formal audacity and evokes the world of his hometown. He is mobilized. Although he does not see the front, the war is present; his works show real compassion and are imbued with sadness. Chagall feels alienated from Russian society and from a Jewish world threatened from within by the abandonment of a traditional way of life and from without by the social pressure that pushes him to integrate into Russian society. He withdrew into his family and the couple he formed with Bella, whom he married in 1915. Chagall's first exile: he settled in France in 1922 and gave a new direction to his painting. A nostalgia for Russia led him to reconnect with Judaism: he illustrated the Bible and visited Palestine in 1931. During a trip to Lithuania, the Jewish world was threatened by the rise of anti-Semitism. Hence a return to paintings bearing witness to the threatening times and evoking persecution. War: Forced once again into exile, Chagall lived in the United States from 1942 to 1947. His paintings often take as their themes war and the persecution of Jews. Chagall's triple estrangement from the European Jewish society of his origins, from American society in which he did not integrate (he did not learn English), and from France, resulted in a strengthening of the painter's solitude and an orientation towards the only totally accepted community: love, the couple, the family. In the years 1937 to 1950, a series of paintings shows us the painter (or the couple, or the couple-child trio), alone, often, as if to physically mark the separation from the world, hovering in the air. In Chagall's work, the evocation of the family or the couple is not a theme among others but describes what he feels, making love and the couple a community opposed to the false or insufficient one of society. In times of adversity, Chagall was able to oppose an optimism - sometimes naive - and a faith in the future that allowed him to survive, just as he was able to oppose the dominant movements of the art of his time with a fruitful independence. The exhibition reflects this double resistance, artistic and personal, which allowed him to bring to the difficult situations he encountered double responses: of testimony and of overcoming. The images of happiness in his work are responses, in a sort of exorcism, to the images of war. They often evoke flight (aerial or inverted figures, figures of dreams) or love (couples of lovers but also mother and child, family) as escapes from a real world.
Chagall is one of the rare 20th-century artists to have been both a painter who bore witness to his time and the builder of a world outside of it, made of dreams and fantasy. The exhibition presents these two aspects of his work. 1914: Chagall leaves Paris after spending three years there. The paintings he produces then become more documentary. He seems to renounce formal audacity and evokes the world of his hometown. He is mobilized. Although he does not see the front, the war is present; his works show real compassion and are imbued with sadness. Chagall feels alienated from Russian society and from a Jewish world threatened from within by the abandonment of a traditional way of life and from without by the social pressure that pushes him to integrate into Russian society. He withdrew into his family and the couple he formed with Bella, whom he married in 1915. Chagall's first exile: he settled in France in 1922 and gave a new direction to his painting. A nostalgia for Russia led him to reconnect with Judaism: he illustrated the Bible and visited Palestine in 1931. During a trip to Lithuania, the Jewish world was threatened by the rise of anti-Semitism. Hence a return to paintings bearing witness to the threatening times and evoking persecution. War: Forced once again into exile, Chagall lived in the United States from 1942 to 1947. His paintings often take as their themes war and the persecution of Jews. Chagall's triple estrangement from the European Jewish society of his origins, from American society in which he did not integrate (he did not learn English), and from France, resulted in a strengthening of the painter's solitude and an orientation towards the only totally accepted community: love, the couple, the family. In the years 1937 to 1950, a series of paintings shows us the painter (or the couple, or the couple-child trio), alone, often, as if to physically mark the separation from the world, hovering in the air. In Chagall's work, the evocation of the family or the couple is not a theme among others but describes what he feels, making love and the couple a community opposed to the false or insufficient one of society. In times of adversity, Chagall was able to oppose an optimism - sometimes naive - and a faith in the future that allowed him to survive, just as he was able to oppose the dominant movements of the art of his time with a fruitful independence. The exhibition reflects this double resistance, artistic and personal, which allowed him to bring to the difficult situations he encountered double responses: of testimony and of overcoming. The images of happiness in his work are responses, in a sort of exorcism, to the images of war. They often evoke flight (aerial or inverted figures, figures of dreams) or love (couples of lovers but also mother and child, family) as escapes from a real world.