The art of Marc Chagall
With more than 300 works, the retrospective "Chagall: Colour and Music" (now at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and traveling to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art later this summer) takes a unique approach to one the most renowned artists of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall (1887-1985): exploring the role music played in Chagall's life and in shaping his art.
"When we look at his paintings, we're moved by a kind of musicality," curator Anne Grace told CBS News. "He has this way of expressing himself in such a sincere and immediate way that we can't help but be struck by his works."
Pictured: Backdrop design for "Daphnis and Chloe (Act II)" (1958) by Marc Chagall. Gouache, graphite, coloured pencil and tempera on paper.
Marc Chagall
Russian-born artist Marc Chagall poses in front of one of his works at the Cimiez museum in Nice, France, September 26, 1975.
Born in 1887 in present-day Belarus, Marc Chagall was the eldest of nine children in a family of Hasidic Jews. In 1907, he moved to St. Petersburg to study art, and then to Paris, experimenting with the Cubist style in vogue there, but never abandoning his personal artistic vocabulary.
"Birth"
"He was an extraordinary colorist," curator Anne Grace told CBS News' Rita Braver. "You see that in the works throughout his life. For him, color was really a way of expressing himself, expressing feelings, whether they were joyous ones or more sorrowful ones.
"I think, one of the reasons why his art is so popular, is that you feel this emotion in his work. And so even though he was always a figurative artist - we always see very specific subjects in his works - color was really the means with which he expressed himself fully."
Pictured: "Birth" (1911-1912) by Marc Chagall. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago.
"Half-Past Three (The Poet)"
While Chagall was among the most noted artists of the avant garde in the early 20th century, he followed a very individual path, so he is not often included in the art history narratives that concentrate on one movement or another.
"He's using a very modernist painting language, but because he was always very faithful to very specific figurative vocabulary, he is absent from those big narratives," said Grace. "So he's not a Surrealist, he's not a Cubist, he's not a Futurist. But he's influenced by all of these movements."
Pictured: "Half-Past Three (The Poet)" (1911) by Marc Chagall. Oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
"Self-portrait With Seven Fingers"
A Cubist-style self-portrait, Chagall's "Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers" (1912-13) features views of both Paris and his hometown of Vitebsk through the windows.
Why seven fingers? "It actually comes from a Yiddish expression which means, if you do something with seven fingers, is to do one's very best," said Grace. "So it's in this portrait, quite ambitious in scale, that you can see he's really trying to affirm himself as an artist, and wondering maybe who is that artist at that time."
"Green Violinist"
In 1914, he had his first one-man exhibition in Berlin, and began finding success in Paris. He traveled to Russia to marry his sweetheart, Bella, then returned to France, staying until the war.
Pictured: "Green Violinist" (1923-1924) by Marc Chagall. Oil on canvas. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, by gift. © SODRAC & ADAGP 2017, Chagall ®.
Installation
In 1941 Chagall - settled in Provence - gave little thought to leaving France in spite of the war.
"He was often an artist in exile, in a way," Grace told Rita Braver. "And he was working hard, focusing on what he was creating. Maybe he was a dreamer, but it actually is only after Varian Fry [of the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles, who helped Europeans secure safe passage to the United States] knocks at his door and invites him on behalf of the Museum of Modern Art in New York to leave, that he starts thinking about this idea. Luckily, he did get out."
"Aleko"
In New York Chagall was asked to create the costumes for the ballet "Aleko." "It gave him the opportunity to think about these productions not in a literal way, but really to think about color as being something quite parallel to music in a way that he was able to create a kind of universe that was open and conducive to this very immediate and vibrant expression," Grace said.
Pictured: Costume for "Aleko: Gypsy with playing cards" (1942) by Marc Chagall.
"The Firebird"
He was asked to create sets and costumes for the New York City Ballet's production of Stravinsky's "Firebird." Replicas of Chagall's creations are still used by the company 68 years later.
"'Firebird' has a history that goes back to the Russian culture in which he was born," said Grace. "It's based on Russian fairy tales. And so this whole imaginary world is very much one that belongs to him."
Pictured: Backdrop design for "The Firebird: The Enchanted Palace (Act II)" (1945) by Marc Chagall. Gouache, graphite and gold paper collage on paper.
"The Firebird"
Pictured: Backdrop design for "The Firebird: The Enchanted Palace (Act II)" (1945) by Marc Chagall. Gouache, graphite and gold paper collage on paper.
The "Firebird" assignment came after the death of his wife, Bella, when he was so despondent he felt he could no longer paint. "It allowed him really to have a new focus," said Grace. "There were so many costumes as part of this very ambitious production - all of these sort of fairy-tale figures that, in a sense, I think allowed him to just immerse himself in this colorful, imaginary world that lifted him up in a sense - what music and what painting ideally has the capacity to do."
"The Blue Circus"
There are more musical allusions in the painting, "The Blue Circus" (1950-52), such as the moon playing a violin.
"This main figure, this acrobat, is a wonderful image in Chagall's work," said Grace. "First of all, it gives this painting a tremendous sense of movement, but also it connects the work to one of Chagall's favorite themes, the acrobats that inspired him so much in his youth, part of these traveling circuses."
"It's completely natural in Chagall's own mysterious world to have these figures that make music, that dance, that move around. There's this rhythm that you can almost hear in this painting throughout."
"Daphnis and Chloe"
Chagall returned to France in 1948, where he continued to work with stage productions of ballet and opera.
Pictured: Costumes for "Daphnis and Chloe: A Shepherdess" (1959) for the National Opera in Paris.
"He liked America, but he really felt like he was kind of a fish out of water here," said Grace. "He actually never learned English. And certainly his allegiances were with France. Later on, I think he reflected on how important America was, but it wasn't so easy for him to be here."
"The Triumph of Music"
Marc Chagall working on the panels for the New York Metropolitan Opera's new Lincoln Center home in 1966, titled, "The Triumph of Music."
"The Triumph of Music"
Pictured: A model for the wall painting at the Metropolitan Opera at New York's Lincoln Center, "The Triumph of Music (detail)" (1966) by Marc Chagall. Tempera, gouache and collage on paper mounted on Korean paper,
"Receiving this commission was an extremely prestigious one - it's a kind of crowning of his career," said Grace. She says the murals - one red, one yellow - are joyous homages to how important music was to Chagall. "And also, his capacity to move people by this extraordinary color [and] movement."
"The Magic Flute"
Grace said Chagall used the full range of his imagination in creating costumes, particularly of supernatural characters with whom he related in a powerful way: "There's these kind of hybrid figures, part animal, part monsters - this fantastical world that comes to life through the dancers."
Pictured: Costume for "The Magic Flute: Green Face Costume (Queen of the Night)" (1967) by Marc Chagall. Mask reconstruction: 2016. Costume, mask, shoes, tights, gloves. Metropolitan Opera, New York.
"The Magic Flute"
Pictured: Costume for "The Magic Flute: Green Face Costume (Queen of the Night)" (1967). Mask reconstruction: 2016. Costume, mask, shoes, tights, gloves. Metropolitan Opera, New York.
"There are plenty of artists who were popular in their time and we don't hear about them anymore; why do you think [Chagall's] work endures?" asked Rita Braver.
"I think that there's a great immediacy to his work," said Grace. "People feel connected to the stories that he tells. Chagall was a great storyteller. And so whether we know intimately his life or we can actually see that it's quite complex, some of the symbolism, we really don't have to know very much about Chagall to feel that joy, that energy, really that love of life that inspires so many works."
Opéra de Paris
Final model for the ceiling of the Opéra de Paris by Marc Chagall, 1963. Gouache on cloth-backed paper.
Installation
Chagall died in 1985 at age 97.
"He lived through a century that saw incredible tragedies, incredible advances in terms of technology," said Grace. "When we think about living 97 years from very humble beginnings to great recognition of his talent, we can see that he really was an artist who was inspired by the goodness of humankind, the possibly of changing the world. And I think that this idea of hope was very important to him."
"Chagall: Colour and Music" will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through June 11, 2017, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) beginning in July 2017.
Exhibition catalogue: "Chagall: Colour and Music" by Ambre Gauthier (ACC Publishing Group)
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan