Transcontinental Art

Europe experienced great change in the XXeme century as empires became industrialized, competitive, and more and more interconnected. With railway travel becoming available to the middle class, all aspects of life became influenced by the exposure of cultures to one another as people interacted with new places. This trend undoubtedly influenced art as well, as artists could travel to gain inspirations from new places as well as foreign artists. This essay will focus on an artist whose roots were from Eastern Europe, but who worked in Western Europe, Marc Chagall. His unique life between the two places creates a mix of eastern subject matters painted in a style undoubtedly influenced by the art movements taking place while he lived in France. I choose to make this claim using The Rêve, which is a work of art which evokes themes of childhood and love through an emotional aesthetic by using bold colors and abstract subject matter. Transporting viewers into a whimsical landscape by placing a woman and rabbit in an inverted landscape, this piece does not try to depict reality but rather to convey subjective feelings and conjure emotion. Le Rêve uses elements of imagery to symbolize different narratives of the artist, and is conducive to interpretation from the viewer. Chagall, who was originally born in Russia, later lived in several places in Europe in the early 20th century and hence was influenced by the many burgeoning art movements of this time period. This piece exhibits earlier influences of the Fauvist movement he interacted with in the first decade of the 20th century, which was characterized by liberating the traditional color palette to represent emotions rather than colors which are found in the physical world. This piece of art can also be analyzed by studying Chagall’s biography and the way it manifested into his art. Chagall's paintings are full of recurring themes and imagery, and Le Rêve allows us to see into the innerworks of his brain at the time.

Marc Chagall was born on July 6th, 1887 in Russia to a Hasidic Jewish family. Chagall’s Jewish identity was important throughout his entire career and deeply influenced his subject matter, as well as forced him to immigrate several times during his lifetime. After moving to St. Petersburg as a young adult, Chagall studied under Léon Bakst, who inspired him to the possibilities of Jewish success. Following Bakst, Chagall moved to Paris in 1910 and began interacting with the Cubist movement taking Paris by storm. Reducing traditional form into a series of geometric shapes, Cubist painters, led by Picasso and Braque, removed themselves from traditional form and allowed themselves to paint multiple perspectives without regard to convention. Chagall began implementing these concepts into early paintings of his, but his Russian background allowed him to synthesize with his fondness for color and portraying sentiment. After returning to Russia to marry his wife, Bella Rosenfield, he had plans to stay for only enough to marry her but became trapped in the country by WW1, and then the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He had acquired fame by this time and was offered a position within the Soviet regime in visual arts, but declined because of the control he would be under as part of the government. Returning to France in 1923, he tried to recreate paintings of his earlier years by using sketches and memory. Le Rêve was painted during this period, and he charges the painting with symbols of his childhood and what he can remember. It is this time period which he began pioneering his fantastical pieces which impacted the Surrealist movement of the time. Although his art shares many of the elements of Surrealism, he did not present with the Surrealist group of Dali, Breton, and the several other famous Surrealists, but that is not to say inspiration was not shared between the group based in Paris.

Le Rêve was painted in 1927 and corresponds with Chagall’s life in Paris at the time. He had fled from his homeland which was overtaken by the Communist regime, and his longing to return home is manifested in his work by painting a childlike landscape to remind himself of his childhood. In Communist Russia, Chagall’s work was censored and this piece is in defiance to that, by pushing the boundaries of color and the abstract subject matter. Placed within a loose blue background, a human sized bunny with a woman comfortably draped over its back is set in the foreground. The blue color does not cover the entirety of the background, as he chose to leave white peeking through to convey a sense of fragileness which dreams carry. The image invites you to make the rabbit into a horse or a normal animal which carries a human, but the definite rabbit plays with your brain and further invites you to go into this dream state. Bold colors illuminate the clothing and skin of both the woman and bunny, and the sharp contrast of the woman's clothes on the purple blue color which dominates the rest of the painting draws the viewer's gaze to the woman. The composition is further placed into a fantasy world by placing the horizon on the upper bounds of the painting, and anchoring the upside down world with the moon in the bottom left hand corner. This bids the viewer to think of night, which is the time one could imagine something like this while sleeping. By transporting viewers of the painting into the familiarity of childhood, Chagall allows viewers to remember a time which all humans share.

Love was a major factor driving decisions of Chagall’s life, and his infatuation with childhood friend Bella Rosenfield drove him to return home on plans of marrying her. He wrote about her extensively, “Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me,” (My Life, Chagall). She was a major source of inspiration when he chose to paint to convey the emotion of love, and Le Rêve exhibits this with the sensual position he places the woman subject in as well as the nude skin he chooses to paint. The reds, pinks, and purples are all colors which transmit the feeling of Love, and he uses them sparingly in this piece to draw your gaze to specific spots. Playing with the idea of dreams, he uses the sexual references to make the viewer think of their own fantasies and subconscious dreams which take themes of love and sex.

Inspiration for this piece is not only taken from Chagall’s upbringing, but is a nod to Henry Fuseli’s, The Nightmare, 1781 which can now be viewed in the Detroit Institute of Arts. In a very similar composition, Fuseli painted a woman sprawled backwards in billowing white clothing, unsuspecting of the trouble which lay above her. A demonic apelike figure sits above the woman, and looks to be in a menacing position. Behind her sits a horse, who is painted in all black with white eyes, creating drama with the obviously demonic animals surrounding her. These feelings are even more accentuated by Fuseli’s expert use of chiaroscuro, contrasting the women's white clothing and the animals' dark figures to create anxiety for what is to come for the beautiful subject. This painting was of interest to many, including inspiration for a scene of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as well as hanging above Sigmund Freud's desk. Freud, who pioneered psychoanalysis and was fascinated with dreams and their significance, became famous within the Surrealist community especially concerning his work on the unconscious mind. Chagall was fascinated with dreams as well, pulling on his background and biography. Dreams and visions play a large role in Jewish folklore, and Chagall's upbringing placed these ideas at the forefront of many of his paintings. Chagall was inspired by Fuseli and made it into his own, by conveniently changing the name from “Nightmare” to “Dream”, as well as changing the composition and arrangement of colors to suit the new name. Rather than a demonic horse, placed above the woman, Chagall chose to paint a bunny, albeit a horse sized one, below the woman. Rather than a color palette of black and white using chiaroscuro to emphasize contrast, Chagall uses bold, attention grabbing colors to create his sense of contrast. These slight changes completely change the meaning of the painting from something horrific to a place of fantasy. He does this to show the dichotomy of dreams and nightmares, and how the two are inherently the same thing with different details.

Chagall was widely famous for his work on the ceiling of Palais Garnier, completed in 1964 at the age of 77. At the time, the ceiling was criticized heavily and seen as blasphemous to cover the original piece done by Jules Lenepveu. Using the three primary colors, he juxtaposes his abstract piece with the classical style of the Opera house. He pays homage to the great composers, each of them given a distinct color. For example Beethoven's Fidelio is painted in green while Tchaikovsky's Firebird is done in blue, which creates contrast by using vastly different colors yet still being harmonious by using loose figures and flowing lines. This masterpiece offers so much study into the painting of Chagall and the methods he helped to pioneer, laying the groundwork for modern and abstract art in the later 20th century. Employing methods of loose brushstrokes and pleasing colors to reach harmony and create an aesthetic to carry the symbolism he wishes to paint. Marc Chagall is just one of the countless examples of artists who traveled the continent in search of new methods and inspiration, and his life and career then influenced generations to come. The interconnectedness of cultures creates new perspectives drawing from both, and Chagall's career is a great example of this in the 20th century.