Marc Chagall was a French, Russian, and Jewish artist. He was born in July 1887 and died in March 1985. He was one of the early modernist artists and the influence of his work has reached many places in the world. He was associated with major artistic styles and created a large variety of art, such as book illustrations, stained glass, drawings, the Paris Opera ceiling, the windows in the UN, Chicago, and Israel and more. Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is”.
The painting I selected is called I and the Village. It was created in 1911 by Marc Chagall.
This painting has many modernist elements. It includes the use of vibrant colors – red, pink, blue, green, yellow and a mix of them. It also expresses emotions such as the artists’ longingness for his village and the people who lived there – we can see a woman milking a cow, perhaps this was his mother. The use of straight lines to separate and combine many different ideas in one painting such as a man with a sickle, houses and a church, a horse and a green face looking at each other, woman milking a cow, a hand with jewelry and a tree blooming. I am sure that this painting hides many more images in it that will reveal themselves when revisited with a fresh look.
I encountered this painting during my visit to MoMA. At first glance, this work seemed too busy to me, but the more I looked at it, I began to see the many details Chagall integrated into it. A feeling of curiosity arose and I found myself standing in front of the huge puzzle trying to understand the artists’ message. I like that this painting expresses a variety of emotions, and you can always find something to relate to in this work in any emotional state.
(https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78984?artist_id=1055&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist)
Sophia, As you know, this is one of Chagall’s most famous paintings. You do a nice job of describing some of what is going on in the work. There are several important modernist elements here: the decidedly un-realistic use of color, the kaleidoscopic composition, the playing around with scale and proportion, and more. It is a great example of modernist experimentation with form!