Chagall’s Bible Images

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Chagall’s Bible Images

By: Richard McBee

Published: June 1st, 2011

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Chagall and the Bible

Museum of Jewish Art and History, Paris

71, Rue du Temple, Paris, France

www.mahj.org

Until June 5, 2011

Ironically the same quote by art critic Robert Hughes cited in my May 20^th review “Chagall and the Cross” namely that Marc Chagall was the “quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century,” is applicable in our consideration of Chagall’s images for his graphic masterpiece, The Bible. Except here it illuminates the truth: his greatness as a Jewish artist is founded on his lifelong obsession with the Torah. No matter how far he strayed from his Jewish roots, even his late-in-life dalliance with Judeo-Christian universalism as surveyed in that review, nothing could compromise his amazing insights and comprehension of the Torah narratives.

His status as a “quintessential Jewish artist” began when he formed a working relationship with the legendary art dealer and publisher, Ambroise Vollard, in Paris sometime after 1922. Chagall had recently arrived from his native Russia and was by then somewhat of a celebrity. As such he was commissioned by Vollard to illustrate Gogol’s Dead Souls, a masterpiece of 19^th century Russian literature. Afterward Vollard commissioned him to illustrate the 17^th century French classic, La Fontaines’s Fables, further developing Chagall’s etching techniques and skill as an illustrator of complex narratives. By mutual consent, in 1931 the next project was a series of 105 black and white etchings of the Bible. According to scholar Una E. Johnson, Vollard “wanted to be immortalized as the publisher of a modern Bible.”

In my review of “Chagall’s Bible” at MOBIA (Jewish Art 01-02-2009) I described the two editions of hand colored etchings in this series published by Verve magazine in 1956 and again in 1960. These colored versions were all based on the original black and white etchings done more than 20 years earlier between 1931 and 1939. Much to my surprise the current exhibition in the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris shows 20 original color studies in gouache (opaque water color) of these biblical narratives, all done in 1930-31. They are simply a revelation.

Previously Chagall’s depictions from the Bible were limited and not seriously engaged in the substance of the subject, always reflections of his personal life or memories of the Russian shtetl. Now, at age 44, he unleashed his fully mature imagination and artistic prowess upon the heart of the Torah narratives. In comparison with the black and white etchings that would follow in the next eight years, these color studies are deeply poetic and nuanced.

The Creation of Man shows a winged figure flying across the page carrying the newly created Adam, seemingly still asleep, echoing Genesis 2:8 which sates that after God created Adam he placed him in the garden in Eden. This mysterious nocturnal scene is illuminated by a glowing sun that still contains the smaller moon within it. While Hashem’s name is written in the sun-moon orb, it seems that Chagall had originally considered the winged figure to be a depiction of God Himself, but later changed his mind. Over the years we see this motif of God/angel interchangeability in many of Chagall’s biblical images, much as our Torah text will switch between an angel speaking on God’s behalf and God speaking directly. The luminescent colors subtly shift from the warm whites of the angel to the pale pink of Adam in rich contrast with the deep blacks and blues of the nighttime sky.