Me and Marc Chagall
It’s funny how one’s tastes in anything can change over one’s life. I never could enjoy or appreciate the art of Marc Chagall as its biblical representation did not reach me. My parents hung a reproduction in their bathroom of his home town, where my grandfather too was born, Vitebsk, and I did note its vivid colours without understanding the symbolism. On the cruise in December the art curator was a huge admirer and persuaded me to buy a non-authenticated work. I had seen a Fake or Fortune programme where not only did the Chagall authentication committee call a supplied “Chagall” a fake but ordered its destruction. I felt so sorry for the owner family who loved the picture and had it in their dining room for years. The presenter and art dealer Philip Mould made the point that in no other business you could have something which depending on objective opinion could be worth £50m or nothing. In the case of Chagall the issue is complicated as there are so many fakes around- hence the order for destruction which the courts have upheld – and authentication is all the harder as Chagall, nice man that he was, was known to sign a copy as a dedication for someone.
Yesterday Alice and I visited a place where there was assuredly no fakes, the museum of Marc Chagall in Nice. It involved quite a traipse in the rain but we were rewarded by an uplifting experience. The museum is unique as it was built in Chagall’s lifetime and he had an influence in it. There is really one room and this is devoted to large tableaux of famous biblical scenes: the Garden of Eden, the sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob’s ladder. However the helpful audio guide explained that the symbolism extended to the home town of Vitebsk. It’s roofs, his beloved wife Bella, goats, acrobats and violins all appear bathed in rich reds and blues and yellows creating an almost surreal effect. Iconic might be the better description as Russian icons did influence him. Being a museum, we were spared the hordes and could enjoy each tableau comfortably. There was also large mosaic over a fountain.
In his peripatetic life that took him from Russia to France to Germany to the USA and back to the South of France Chagall used many mediums. He painted on ceramics in the same pottery- Ramoura- as Picasso but also produced some wonderfully luminous stained glass, one of which is in a chapel in Kent. He painted the ceiling of the Paris Opera and produced a carpet in Israel. He could never be classified of a school, generally if he is called anything he was the finest Jewish painter of the twentieth century. Alice provided an expert commentary and you could say after being a non believer I am now a committed convert.
