Flying bride and groom, golden roosters and violin-playing goats. These are motifs we associate with the French-Belarusian Jewish artist Marc Chagall. He is regarded as modernism’s great, lyrical riddle painter: Someone who, with a deep longing for beauty, stitched together fragments of childhood memories, elements from folk fantasy and religious symbols. THE MAN HIMSELF: Marc Chagall (1887-1985), here photographed in New York in 1941. Few would think of him as a typical socially engaged and political artist. But in a way he was actually just that, at least in the interwar period. It is this somewhat unknown chapter in his artistry that the Henie Onstad Art Center will now highlight. And I must say I was both surprised and inspired! This was an artist I thought I knew inside out. MOURNING: A section of the exhibition shows Chagall’s strong depictions of grief after the death of his wife Bella, such as the work Around her. Here we also see several of the well-known Chagall elements such as the well-known village settlement from Vitebsk and a floating bridal couple. Photo: CNAC-MNAM / Philippe Migeat But here they offer a circle of motifs and interpretations of this that I have not been aware of before. His paintings from the 1930s and 1940s show that he was not just an artist who sought refuge in his own surrealistic dream world, but one who fearlessly entered and reflected on the growing anti-Semitism in Europe and the plight of the Jews. At the Henie Onstad Art Center, a fine mix of well-known works from the period is now on display, but also quite a few works that will be new to the vast majority of people. SEE: Feature about the exhibition in Nyhetsmorgen with art critic Mona Pahle Bjerke. Longing for his hometown Marc Chagall grew up in the city of Vitebsk in present-day Belarus, which was then part of the Russian Empire. In 1922, he chose to emigrate to Paris when the Communist Party restricted artistic freedom. He depicted in many pictures how he tried to take root in his new hometown. SYMBOL: In “Bonjour Paris” (1939-1942) we meet the red rooster, which is a symbol of fire and destruction. It towers over the city side by side with a humanized Eiffel Tower. But it is not Paris we see here, but a small village and livestock on a stroll. Photo: Archives Marc et Ida Chagall NIGHT OWL: It is often evening and night in Chagall’s paintings, as here in “The Dream” (ca. 1938-1939). With bright figures on a dark background and a penchant for curved shapes, often based on the female figure, he created his beautiful and enigmatic pictures. Photo: BONO 2023 / Chagall RIDDLE: “The black glove” (1923-1948) is an enigmatic motif in which one face slides into another, perhaps as an image of a double consciousness; both the night world of the dreamer and the clear day thinking. Photo: Archives Marc et Ida Chagall In several paintings, he allows the well-known village buildings to merge with the metropolis, with the Eiffel Tower as the Parisian symbol. But Paris did not become a permanent home for him. When Germany occupied France, he and his wife Bella had to flee to New York. Christ as a Jewish symbol In the 30s and 40s he revolved a lot around the Jewish. A particularly strong image that I have never seen before is “Loneliness” from 1933. Here we see a man with the Torah in his arms, sitting with his head on the back of his hand and pondering with a burning city in the background. In the background of “Loneliness” (1933), dark clouds rise, or perhaps there is smoke from a burning city. The man’s face shows that he is immersed in heavy thoughts. He does not seem to be comforted by the pale blue angel hovering in the sky above him, or the calf playing the violin behind his back. The animal with its Egyptian eye, which is painted straight ahead even though the head is painted in profile, has a sadness and a compassion in its gaze. Photo: Tel Aviv Museum of Art As an image of the unjust persecution of the Jews, he used the crucifixion motif. Here he emphasized with various attributes the fact that Jesus Christ himself was a Jew. In “Crucifixion in Yellow” (1940) it is the green Torah that refers to his Jewish origins. Here the savior has taken on female forms. Perhaps to show that it is not only about the actual carpenter’s son from Nazareth, but all the Jews of the world, who were also to be persecuted mercilessly and in various ways nailed to the cross. In some of these motifs, I think the literary gets the upper hand a little, as where we see a Nazi (possibly Hitler himself) in uniform and Nazi badge rigging down the ladder at the foot of the cross. JESUS: “Crucifixion in Yellow” (1942). It is exciting how Chagall uses the crucified Christ as a symbol of the fate of the Jews. But some of these will be explicit and literary. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen / Henie Onstad Art Center NAZIST: Purple apocalypse, capriccio (1945). A Nazi takes the ladder down from the cross in this painting, which is a little too literary, according to news’s reviewer. Photo: Ben Uri Collection “Jerusalem (Wailing Wall)” from 1931. Photo: Archives Marc et Ida Chagall The strength of art is that it symbolizes and stylizes and conveys things between the lines. Here the message becomes a little too explicit, and it falls more into a flat illustration of a somewhat obvious point. Colorful and life-affirming It is wonderful to wander through the colorful and life-affirming exhibition. Marc Chagall was a superb colourist. He painted with a sensuous reality and created a magical atmosphere and expressive power in his pictures. As a designer, he was somewhat more uneven. BEST ON CANVAS: Chagall was a master of glow, color and mood. That it was not primarily as a designer that he excelled, we can clearly see in his costumes and stage pictures. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen / Henie Onstad Kunstsenter SLAPT: The hand-painted costumes and stage pictures shown in the exhibition are examples of rather relaxed design. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen / Henie Onstad Kunstsenter NOT COMPLETELY SUCCESSFUL: Unlike Picasso, who had form as his superpower, it was more difficult for Chagall to transfer the power of the painterly expression to other media and formats. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen / Henie Onstad Art Center He was probably not the artist who planned his compositions in detail, but he often still made things fall into a kind of intuitive balance. With the Ukraine war as a gloomy backdrop, I find “Marc Chagall: a world in revolt” to be desperately relevant. But the exhibition is neither dark nor heavy. This artistic universe is so full of beauty, vitality and buoyancy that I still leave it feeling enriched and lifted! news reviews Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen / Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Title: “Marc Chagall: The world in upheaval” Artist: Marc Chagall Curator: Caroline Ugelstad and Dr. Ilka Voermann Exhibition period: 17 March 2023–18. June 2023 Location: Henie Onstad Art Centre, Bærum
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The world in upheaval” at Henie Onstad Art Center – Reviews and recommendations
