Marc Chagall...When the Chicken Stopped Being Kitsch
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| image from http://www.antiquity.tv/ |
Marc Chagall...When the Chicken Stopped Being Kitsch
By Federico Correa
In a recent article by Patrick Neal, painters Amy Sillman , Peter Doig, and Jordan Kantor...painter and professor at California College of the Arts... discussed the art of painter Marc Chagall...specifically the current exhibition Chagall: Love, War, and Exile on view at the Jewish Museum.
I have great admiration for painter Marc Chagall...."the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists", according to art historian Michael J. Lewis. His painted image is his life. Like Pierre Bonnard, Chaim Soutine, Philip Guston, Francisco Goya, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, among others, Chagall immersed himself in the mundane of his immediate environment from which he painted his heart felt narratives . He painted the times and the world that he lived in.
As Bonnard , Chagall infused his painting with his immediate surroundings and personal life as topic. Bonnard's home.. his dining room ; his garden; his tragic love life were all subject. When does a woman immersed in water in a bathtub stop being a woman immersed in water in a bathtub? Chagall's fantasies .... a clock on the back of a fish floating in space; a yellow cock hiding in a bouquet of flowers are not all what they seem at first glance. They are however fraught with the subliminal and the universal. As my second-grade teacher would scream..." class... PAY ATTENTION".
As Bonnard , Chagall infused his painting with his immediate surroundings and personal life as topic. Bonnard's home.. his dining room ; his garden; his tragic love life were all subject. When does a woman immersed in water in a bathtub stop being a woman immersed in water in a bathtub? Chagall's fantasies .... a clock on the back of a fish floating in space; a yellow cock hiding in a bouquet of flowers are not all what they seem at first glance. They are however fraught with the subliminal and the universal. As my second-grade teacher would scream..." class... PAY ATTENTION".
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| A Cow with a Parasol. 1946 |
Neal writes..."Doig and Sillman both admitted that their appreciation of Chagall’s folksy scenes and sincerity had warmed over time after having been less receptive to his art when they were younger." Yes.. "folksy"... "Chagall’s folksy scenes"..... is how some are apt to define his oeuvre. I suppose this lack of understanding of artists like Chagall is not rare. On casual view its all kitsch...and kitsch is hardly " high-minded" art. One does not easily "warm over" to such artists like Chagall whose narratives are graced with a plethora of farm animals. After all, images of chickens, goats, horses, fish, brides, donkeys hauling fire wood or people , are not exactly sophisticated or "high-minded" in spirit or content. Certainly, there is no edge or relevancy in such motifs/objects. Think again......" PAY ATTENTION".
Neal writes..."With so much modern art concerning itself with existentialism and angst in the form of high-minded abstraction, Chagall comes off as accessible and human, his work laying bare a desire for love, affection, and kindness." Indeed....french critic Raymond Cogniat wrote, "the most obviously constant element is his (Chagall) gift for happiness and his instinctive compassion, which even in the most serious subjects prevents him from dramatization...". Chagall's lyrical line..his fecund cast of characters, his mastery of color, his organic shapes and objects breathed life to his canvas unlike the cold, detached , hard-edge approach that defines much of contemporary art of today.
.......and the mob cried "give us" Koons!
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