Marc Chagall
Belorussian, 1887-1985 (active France)
Young Girl in Pursuit (Jeune fille en marche), 1927-1928 ca.
oil and gouache on composition board
25 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.
SBMA, Gift of Mme. Ganna Walska
1963.18
Marc Chagall, Self Portrait, 1960
"The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fairy tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament." - Marc Chagall
RESEARCH PAPER
Marc Chagall is known as a painter of fantasy; his images are often scattered around the canvas with no apparent logical order. Recognizing the forms are easy enough-though they may be strangely juxtaposed-but the intense colors are not those we expect to see on these forms.
Chagall has often said that even he did not understand his paintings; that they were just images he painted from his imagination. He discards theories about his paintings as nonsense. It is true that a painting evokes a response, emotional or intellectual, that cannot be strictly expressed in words; but knowledge of his works will increase our pleasure of in and understanding of them.
Chagall was born in 1887 in the old and tradition oriented town of Vitebsk, Russia. More than half of the town’s populace was Jewish, a community surrounded by anti-Semitic Russia. Childhood memories are the foundation of Chagall’s later paintings. He studied art in St. Petersburg from 1907-1910; disguised as a servant because Jews were not allowed to ravel otherwise. By 1911 he was in Paris, escaping the oppressive environment of Russia.
In Paris the avant-garde artists (postimpressionists, cubists, and fauves) were interested in the manner of representing objects, rather than merely portraying recognizable subject matter. Chagall was quickly accepted as one of the avant-garde but he never really fit into any particular school of art.
He went back to Russia for World War I but returned to Paris in 1923. Chagall's work became famous for it’s fairy tale, dreamlike quality. Some experts feel he was a forerunner of Surrealism.
Perhaps because Chagall lived in a society that denied him certain fundamental rights, he created a fantasy world. At any rate, he believed that the inner (or spirit, or dream) world is just as real-perhaps more real-as that we see around us. He was less interested in the physical aspects of the subject than he was with its spirit; his pictures are involved with sentiment, passion and the state of the soul.
Chagall paints, as the poet writers, not directly from nature but with what might be called a delayed action response. He stores forms and colors in his imagination, allowing them to change as memory dims and new experiences cause them to be viewed with new insight, before putting them down on canvas in their new contexts.
Underneath all Chagall’s dream imagery are his memories of Vitebsk, its inhabitants, his family and his strong Jewish faith. His people are peasants, his women tender and his married couples loving. Because Jews were segregated from other societies in Russia and because he was separated from home, his work often concerns alienation; separation from family and homeland, or separation of child from adult.
The untitled painting has recently been referred to as Girl in Pursuit shows a young girl striding purposely forward, towards some imaginary goal, perhaps her own future. She is completely surrounded by the sky, lending cosmic importance to her mission. The main lines of the composition (body, hair, cane) are diagonal traditionally symbolic of transition. She strides briskly, as if moving toward some new phase or position in life. Yet she carries in her hair the small image of an older woman-perhaps her mother, her conscience or her soul-who tries to hold her back from her intended goal; or, at least, tries to temper the girl’s dreams by reminding her of traditional instilled values.
During the period when this picture was painted (1927-28) Chagall was working, in the south of France, on a series of paintings with a circus motif; Our girl looks like she could be part of the circus, or even running away to join one. It isn’t logical in the real world to carry someone in your streaming hair, but not unreasonable to carry one along in your inner world. The luminous night sky and intense colors suck the viewer into the painting, and therefore into her dream world.
Symbolic meanings aside, Chagall’s paintings are aesthetically pleasing because of their colors and patterns. He feels that a painting should be just as good upside down as right side up, in other words the shapes and colors are just as important as content.
Basically Chagall’s art is emotional and nostalgic. It is a very personal art based on Chagall’s own memories, distilled by time and experience.
Bibliography
Erben, Walter. Marc Chagall. Thames and Hudson, 1957.
Kloomok, Issac. Marc Chagall: His Life and Work. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1951
McMullen, Roy. The World of Mark Chagall: Doubleday & Co. 1968
Meyer, Franz. Marc Chagall, New York: Harry H. Adams Inc. n. d.
Osborne, Harold (ed.). the Companion to Art. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. 1910.
Russell, John. The Meaning of Modern Art. Vols. 5 & *. New York:
The Museum of Modern Art
Sweeney, James Johnson. Marc Chagall. New York:
Museum of Modern Art 1946
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Terri Childs, February, 1977
Chagall in Paris, 1921
GUIDE BY CELL
Guide by Cell Script
Josie Martin
As you approach, Young Girl in Pursuit, or as the artist named it, “Jeune fille en marche,” you may suspect the artist is Marc Chagall. The brilliant colors, the eager girl striding upward with that strange small figure wearing a Russian peasant costume nested in her hair, are all typical of his work.
Chagall’s style is both sophisticated and childlike. It is always emotional. The strong diagonal lines of the girl, of the cane, and the hair are symbolic of movement and perhaps transition.
Look closely at the painting. Where is she off to with those beads bouncing off her chest and that rush of hair - almost as if she is flying?
The girl portrayed was part of a series of circus compositions commissioned in 1927 by Ambroise Vollard, a Parisian art dealer in France.
The colors and patterns are vivid, the movement, and the luminous cosmic sky pull us into this enchanting painting.
Chagall called upon his fragmented early life in a small Russian Village and his nostalgic dream-world for his subjects. Some say he was a forerunner to Surrealism, but he belongs to no particular school of art. He was a master, working also in glass and mosaic; he even designed state sets.
Finally, one wonders: that little woman in her hair, is it the young girl’s conscience? Her mother warning her of danger of a wider world? What do you think? Only the viewer can say.