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Through one of those curious reversals of fate, one more exile has regained his native land. Since the exhibition of his work at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 1987 which gave rise to an extraordinary popular fervour, Marc Chagall has experienced a second birth.

Kermis

1908

Oil on canvas, 68 × 95 cm

Wright Ludington Collection Santa Barbara (California, USA)

Here we have a painter, perhaps the most unusual painter of the twentieth century, who at last, attained the object of his inner quest: the love of his Russia. Thus, the hope expressed in the last lines of My Life, the autobiographical narrative which the painter broke off in 1922 when he left for the West – “and perhaps Europe will love me and, along with her, my Russia” – has been fulfilled.

My Fiancée in Black Gloves

1909

Oil on canvas, 88 × 65 cm

Kunstmuseum, Basle

A confirmation of this is provided today by the retrospective tendency in his homeland which, beyond the all-in-all natural re-absorption of the artist into the national culture, also testifies to a genuine interest, an attempt at analysis, an original viewpoint which enriches our study of Chagall.

Self-Portrait

1909

Oil on canvas, 57 × 48 cm

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

Contrary to what one might think, this study is still dogged by uncertainties in terms of historical fact. As early as 1961 in what is still the main work of reference, Franz Meyer emphasised the point that even the establishment of, for example, a chronology of the artist’s works, is problematic.

The Artist’s Sister (Mania)

1909

Oil on canvas, 93 × 48 cm

Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

In fact, Chagall refused to date his paintings or dated them a posteriori.

A good number of his paintings are therefore dated only approximately and to this, we must add the problems caused to Western analysts by the absence of comparative sources and, very often, by a poor knowledge of the Russian language.

Sabbath

1910

Oil on canvas, 90 × 98 cm

Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

Therefore, we can only welcome such recent works as that of Jean-Claude Marcadé who, following the pioneers Camilla Gray and Valentina Vassutinsky-Marcadé, has underlined the importance of the original source – Russian culture – for Chagall’s work. One must rejoice even more in the publications of contemporary art historians such as Alexander Kamensky and Mikhail Guerman with whom we now have the honour and pleasure of collaborating.

The Wedding

1910

Oil on canvas, 98 × 188 cm

Collection of the artist’s family, France

Yet, Marc Chagall has inspired a prolific amount of literature. The great names of our time have written about his work: from the first serious essay by Efros and Tugendhold, The Art of Marc Chagall, published in Moscow in 1918 when Chagall was only 31, to Susan Compton’s erudite and scrupulous catalogue, Chagall, which appeared in 1985, the year of the artist’s death.

The Butcher

1910

Gouache on paper, 34 × 24 cm

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

On the occasion of the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, there has been no lack of critical studies, but all this does not make easy our perception of Chagall’s art. The interpretation of his works – now linking him with the Ecole de Paris, now with the Expressionist movement, now with Surrealism – seems to be full of contradictions.

Jewish Wedding

1910s

Pen and Indian ink on paper mounted on cardboard

20.5 × 30 cm

Z. Gordeyeva Collection, St. Petersburg

Does Chagall totally defy historical or aesthetic analysis? In the absence of reliable documents – some of which were clearly lost as a result of his travels, there is a danger that any analysis may become sterile. This peculiarity by which the painter’s art seems to resist any attempt at theorization or even categorization is moreover reinforced by a complementary observation.

Birth of a Child

1911

Oil on canvas, 65 × 89.5 cm

Collection of the artist’s family, France

The greatest inspiration, the most perceptive intuitions are nourished by the words of poets or philosophers. Words such as those of Cendrars, Apollinaire, Aragon, Malraux, Maritain or Bachelard… Words which clearly indicate the difficulties inherent in all attempts at critical discourse, as Aragon himself underlined in 1945: “Each means of expression has its limits, its virtues, its inadequacies.

Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers

1911

Oil on canvas, 128 × 107 cm

Royal Collection, The Hague

Nothing is more arbitrary than to try to substitute the written word for drawing, for painting. That is called Art Criticism, and I cannot in good conscience be guilty of that.” Words which reveal the fundamentally poetic nature of Chagall’s art itself. Even if the arbitrariness of critical discourse appears to be even more pronounced in the case of Chagall, should we renounce any attempt at clarifying, if not the mystery of his work, then at least his plastic experience and pictorial practice?

I and the Village

1911

Oil on canvas, 191.2 × 150.5 cm

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Should we limit ourselves to a mere lyrical effusion of words with regard to one of the most inventive individuals of our time? Should we abandon research of his aesthetical order, or on the contrary persist in believing that his aesthetic lies in the intimate and multiform life of ideas, in their free and at times contradictory exchange?

The Violonist

1911

Oil on canvas, 94.5 × 69.5 cm

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

If this last is the necessary pre-requisite of all advance in thought, then the critical discourse on Chagall can be enriched by new knowledge contributed by the works in Russian collections which have up to now remained unpublished, by archives which have been brought to light and by the testimony of contemporary historians.

The Poet (Half Past Three)

1911

Oil on canvas, 197 × 146 cm

Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA

The comparison gives us a deeper comprehension of this wild art that exhausts any attempt to tame it despite efforts to conceptualize it. About 150 paintings and graphic pieces by Chagall are analysed here by the sensitive pen of the author. They were all produced between 1906–1907 – Woman with a Basket – and 1922, the year in which Chagall left Russia for good, with the exception of several later works, Nude Astride a Cockerel (1925), Time is a River without Banks (1930–1939) and Wall-clock with a Blue Wing (1949).

The Yellow Room

1911

Oil on canvas, 84 × 112 cm

Private collection, courtesy Christie’s, London

The corpus of works presented provides a chronological account of the early period of creativity. The author’s analysis stresses with unquestionable relevance the Russian cultural sources on which Chagall’s art fed. It reveals the memory mechanism which lies at the heart of the painter’s practice and outlines a major concept. It is tempting to say a major “tempo”, that of time-movement perceptible in the plastic structure of Chagall’s oeuvre.

Still-Life with Lamp

1910

Oil on canvas, 81 × 45 cm

Courtesy A. Rosengart Gallery, Lucerne

Thus we can much better understand the vivid flourishing of the artist’s work with its cyclical, apparently repetitive (but why?) character, which might be defined as organic and which calls to mind the ontological meaning of creation itself as set out in the writings of Berdiayev.

Russian Village Under the Moon

1911

Oil on canvas, 126 × 104 cm

Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich

This primordial outpouring of creativity which brought the admiration of Cendrars and Apollinaire, this imperious pictorial paganism which dictates its own law to the artist, sets forth an aesthetic and an ethic of predestination which, for our part, we would like to clarify. It is in the immediacy of Chagall’s pictorial practice, in the immediacy of each creative decision that his own identity lies, that he himself is to be found.

Dedicated to My Fiancée

1911

Oil on canvas, 196 × 114.5 cm

Kunstmuseum, Bern

This self-revelation is related to us by Chagall himself. The autobiographical My Life, written in Russian, first appeared in 1931 in Paris, in a French translation by Bella Chagall. Providing us with extremely precious evidence of a whole part of the artist’s life, this text – tender, alert and droll – reveals behind its anecdotal nature the fundamental themes of his work and above all, its problematic character.

Apollinaire

1911

Pencil on paper, 33.5 × 26 cm

Collection of the artist’s family, France

The tale as a whole is not moreover without some evocations of the artist’s biographies studied by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz who set out a typology. From the first lines one’s attention is attracted by a singular phrase: “That which first leaped to my eyes was an angel!” Thus, the first hours of Chagall’s life were registered here specifically in visual terms. The tale begins in the tone of a parable and his life-story could not belong to anyone but a painter.

Study for “The Rain”

1911

Gouache and pencil on cardboard, 22.5 × 30 cm

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Chagall, who recalls the difficulties of his birth, writes: “But above all I was born dead. I did not want to live. Imagine a white bubble which does not want to live. As if it were stuffed with paintings by Chagall.” Thus, was living there perhaps meant to liberate that which lay inside him – painting?

To Russia, Asses and Others

1911–1912

Oil on canvas, 156 × 122 cm

Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris

The theme of vocation contained within this premonitory dream, the obvious sign of a unique predestination, seems to us to be even more significant in that it determines the events in the artist’s life and gives meaning to his destiny.

Marc Chagall was born into a strict Jewish family for whom the ban on representations of the human figure had the weight of dogma.

Hommage à Apollinaire

1911–1912

Oil on canvas, 109 × 198 cm

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

If one is unaware of the nature of traditional Jewish education, one can hardly imagine the transgressive force, the fever of being which propelled the young Chagall when he flung himself on the journal Niva (Field) to copy from it a portrait of the composer Rubinstein. This education was based on the historic law of Divine Election and covered the religious side of life only.

Le Saoul (The Drinker)

1911–1912

Oil on canvas, 85 × 115 cm

Private collection

The transmission to the very core of the Jewish hearth was essentially effected through oral means. Each prayer, each recitation from the Torah or the Talmud imposed on the believer was in a sing-song voice; reading lessons were held out loud; everyday life was given rhythm by the repetitive times of the ritual practice of songs and on the sabbath day, solemn benedictions. Each Jewish house is a place made holy by the liturgy of the word.