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Video: Why Marc Chagall wrote his famous "Violinist" on the tablecloth: And why the violinist is green
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In the modern world of art Mark Shagal - the most famous Belarusian artist and the most expensive avant-garde artist in France, standing on a par with the greatest masters of the last century. And just a century ago, the canvases of an emigrant from small Vitebsk, who painted flying goats and Jews, did not fit into any artistic style, moreover, they were classified as "degenerate art", and, along with the paintings of other avant-garde artists, were publicly burned by the Nazis.
Marc Chagall - "citizen of the world"
Marc Chagall, who was born in 1887 in Belarus, emigrated to Paris twice - in 1910 and 1923 and received French citizenship in 1937, fled from Europe to New York in the early 1940s from Nazism. After the end of the war, he returned to France, where he lived and worked until his death in 1985.
Read more about the artist's life twists and turns in our review: Marc Chagall - "artist without borders": Little-known facts from the life and work of the avant-garde artist.
"Citizen of the World", rejected at home, was listed in all Soviet encyclopedias as a French artist. His work was extremely disliked by officials from the art of the Soviet formation. By the way, it was not to the taste of the Nazis, who literally persecuted the artist during the Second World War, forcing him to flee to America.
And who would then have guessed that, years later, the greatest museums in the world, as well as the owners of private collections of 20th century art, who have his canvases in their collections, will be proud of his works.
Art critics call Chagall a rebel and a dreamer, but by and large he left behind a reputation as an artist who lives outside the rules. The manner of the author, despite the primitiveness, is impossible to repeat. And the style, although it is considered close to the avant-garde, can hardly be fully attributed to this direction. Throughout his long creative career, he kept pace with the Impressionists and Cubists, Suprematists and Surrealists, while maintaining his own whimsical style. It was this bright corporate style that admired the fans in the artist's work most of all.
The story of one painting "Violinist" (1912)
At the beginning of his creative career, the artist was so poor that his famous 1912 work The Fiddler, depicting a musician dancing and playing on the roof, was painted on an ordinary tablecloth. While living in Paris, Chagall was a Jewish immigrant at the time. He had so little money that he bought canvases for his work at flea markets, painted on any that he could get. Sometimes even sheets, nightgowns and tablecloths were used. Looking closely, you can see the checkered pattern of the tablecloth, especially in those parts of the painting where the paint layer is thinnest. By the way, this discovery was made by researchers who studied a large collection of Chagall's works in the Amsterdam Museum for five years.
The situation was also deplorable with paints: the artist painted many of his paintings using the same nine pigments. In this meager set of palette, black was completely absent; if necessary, the artist extracted it by mixing several colors, from which black turned out to be not completely black, but with a certain shade.
And, curiously, the main character of the picture stands out not only for its size, but also for its color scheme - a green face, dark blue hair and beard, a bright yellow-red violin in his hands. Two young men gaze at him from the bottom up, fascinated. A colorful musician who starts dancing distracts the viewer from the background, and in the meantime, amazing things also unfold there - Chagall presented all seasons of the year, from green summer to snow-white winter.
I would also like to note that Chagall's paintings, often described as fabulous and mythological, contain recurring themes. The artist returned to the heroes of music, as well as to the scenes from Jewish life, more than once. To be more precise, the playing violinist in the work of the painter has a fairly constant leitmotif. Critics tend to recall the author's Jewish origins - a violinist in traditional culture accompanies all stages of the life of a Jewish family.
Last but not least, why is the violinist green and why is he dancing on the roof? Chagall, by the way, had to quite often answer this question personally. The painter calmly asserted that this was by no means an allegory, but reality. Like, he had an uncle who, when he "ate compote", climbed onto the roof so that no one could disturb him. Although art critics interpret the green violinist more ephemeral, namely, as a symbol of human rebirth through art.
I would also like to note that in addition to the artistic gift of a painter, Marc Chagall also wrote poetry in Yiddish. Unfortunately, not many people know about Mark Zakharovich's literary talent. And to continue the theme of the artist's versatile talent, read: Vitebsk genius: Marc Chagall on his hometown in painting and in poems.
Of course, there was also a great love in the artist's life, which he carried through his whole life. Read in our review: In seventh heaven: 29 years of love confessions of the artist Marc Chagall to his wife.
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