Chagall: Modern Master or Just Lucky?
Can we really trust art critics when it comes to telling us what art is worth seeing?
In his recent controversial post on the UK Telegraph newspaper website, entitled "Was Chagall actually any good?", art critic Richard Dorment said that although,
'His work has given more pleasure to more people than almost any other modern artist, Chagall's success was more due to being in the right place at the right time than because he was actually 'any good.'
I roll up my sleeves to critique the critic, and compare my experience of visiting the same exhibition.
Chagall Never Claimed to be a Cubist
Dorment gets my back up straight away by describing Chagall's work as 'pastiche cubism':
"Chagall uses faceted planes not to create volume or to explore pictorial space but as mannerisms or stylistic tricks to give the flying fiddlers, animals, and upside-down figures a veneer of modernity…cubism isn’t particularly suited to narrative or genre, but Chagall doesn’t yet know this.
Richard Dorment
But Chagall never defined himself as a Cubist!
In fact he didn't identify with any particular art movement, and disliked it when people tried to pigeon-hole him into one:
"Impressionism and cubism are alien to me.
Art seems to me to be a state of soul, more than anything else…"
Marc Chagall
I and the Village
Marc Chagall, 1911
Oil on Canvas 191 x 150.5 cm
Oil on Canvas 191 x 150.5 cm
Of course, there is no denying that Cubism had an influence on Chagall's work.
He was introduced to Cubism by Robert Delaunay - and not Le Fauconnier, as cited by Dorment.
Delaunay's wife, Sonia, was also a Russian painter and the couple became close friends with Chagall, introducing him to the artistic community in Paris.
Unlike Picasso and Braque, Delaunay and Chagall, were not interested in the mechanics of objects. For them, Cubism was a means of ordering their dreams, experiences, desires and visions and Chagall, particularly, used it to express his ideas in simplified forms and to give structure and logic to his work.
He was introduced to Cubism by Robert Delaunay - and not Le Fauconnier, as cited by Dorment.
Delaunay's wife, Sonia, was also a Russian painter and the couple became close friends with Chagall, introducing him to the artistic community in Paris.
Unlike Picasso and Braque, Delaunay and Chagall, were not interested in the mechanics of objects. For them, Cubism was a means of ordering their dreams, experiences, desires and visions and Chagall, particularly, used it to express his ideas in simplified forms and to give structure and logic to his work.
Forging a Personal Artistic Style
Chagall was just 24 years old in 1911 when he painted some of his most ambitious paintings featuring the fractured planes that mistakenly led him to be associated with Cubism, such as I and the Village.
Like any young artist, Chagall was experimenting with incorporating elements of different styles into his work, and expressing his independent spirit by using what he found to be valuable in forging his own voice - taking what he needed, and rejecting whatever didn't appeal to him.
The political situation of Europe at he time affected Chagall deeply and personally, as he saw the culture and traditions of his birthplace under threat of annihilation.
Rather than failing to understand the meaning of Cubism, or trying to give his work a 'veneer of modernity', the fractured planes were, for him, a metaphor for the emotional and mental states of the protagonists of his paintings confronted with a world that was literally 'shattering' due to the political upheaval of the time.
Like any young artist, Chagall was experimenting with incorporating elements of different styles into his work, and expressing his independent spirit by using what he found to be valuable in forging his own voice - taking what he needed, and rejecting whatever didn't appeal to him.
The political situation of Europe at he time affected Chagall deeply and personally, as he saw the culture and traditions of his birthplace under threat of annihilation.
Rather than failing to understand the meaning of Cubism, or trying to give his work a 'veneer of modernity', the fractured planes were, for him, a metaphor for the emotional and mental states of the protagonists of his paintings confronted with a world that was literally 'shattering' due to the political upheaval of the time.
The Father of Surrealism
"In their enthusiasm for all things Slavic, Parisian critics overlooked his crudely constructed compositions, heavy attempts at humour, cringeworthy whimsy and fundamental lack of originality, seeing only the exotic subjects, saturated colours and sheer energy of pictures like the Green Donkey of 1911."
Richard Dorment
Although he himself shied away from identifying himself from this label, Chagall was widely acclaimed as the father of Surrealism due to his innovatory incorporation of peasant imagery into a surrealist plane, where scale and forms are distorted and re-imagined.
To him, of course, his subjects were not 'exotic' or mere 'whimsy', as Dorment claims, but reflections of the familiar daily scenes of his childhood.
Chagall's Box
Dorment makes a half-hearted effort to balance his view on Chagall by praising the theatre sets on show at the Tate:
"This series is unlike anything Chagall had done before because it combines monumental scale with simplified form. Realising that the audience needed to take them in from a distance and also that they should not compete with the stage sets, he sought both to clarify his compositions and to suppress extraneous decoration.
And here we come to the one area of the visual arts where it is possible to speak of Chagall’s genius. He is a stage designer comparable to Bakst in the way he uses radiant colour and fantastic costumes as thrilling complements to music and dance."
Richard Dorment
Did Dorment actually see this exhibition?
If so, when he said that Chagall had not previously combined simplified form on a large scale, I guess he must have forgotten about Homage to Apollinaire painted 1911-12 and nearly 2m square in size!
Homage to Apollinaire
Marc Chagall 1911-12
Oil on canvas 200 x 189.9 cm
Oil on canvas 200 x 189.9 cm
Had Dorment spent any time in the exhibition, surely he would be aware that one of the pieces for 'Chagall's Box' (as the set design was affectionately known) Introduction to the Jewish Theatre, rather than 'simplified' is, perhaps, Chagall's most complex work, with a myriad of references and symbols rioting over the surface.
One of the Tate guides spent a good ten minutes explaining to me the contexts behind this piece and clearly might have gone on some time more!
Even the five large panels depicting 'archetypal Jewish characters' are complex when you go up close to them, particularly Drama in which the surface design of the dress fabric of the woman on the left, which Chagall rendered by pushing paint through lace and gauze.
Areas of this painting are left sketched only in pencil forming large monochrome areas in strong contrast to the painted forms.
Furthermore, not all the pieces done for the Wedding Feast are amongst Chagall's most colourful pieces. Love on the Stage, for example is almost monochrome apart from a couple of splashes of colour!
One of the Tate guides spent a good ten minutes explaining to me the contexts behind this piece and clearly might have gone on some time more!
Even the five large panels depicting 'archetypal Jewish characters' are complex when you go up close to them, particularly Drama in which the surface design of the dress fabric of the woman on the left, which Chagall rendered by pushing paint through lace and gauze.
Areas of this painting are left sketched only in pencil forming large monochrome areas in strong contrast to the painted forms.
Furthermore, not all the pieces done for the Wedding Feast are amongst Chagall's most colourful pieces. Love on the Stage, for example is almost monochrome apart from a couple of splashes of colour!
Love on the Stage -
Marc Chagall, 1920
283 x 248 cm Tempera and gouache on canvas
283 x 248 cm Tempera and gouache on canvas
Don't Let the Critics Drag You Down
I re-read Dorment's article, after visiting the Chagall: Modern Master exhibition and I was left with the feeling that either he has a personal dislike of Chagall's work and used the exhibition as an excuse to rant, or he simply never visited the exhibition at all.
Either way, Dorment not only does a great disservice to the work of Chagall, and the phenomenal exhibition put on by Tate Liverpool, but also to the readers of the Telegraph who might look to him for guidance as to exhibitions worth visiting.
Fortunately, by the crowds I saw still visiting the exhibition in the last few weeks of its installation in Liverpool, the British public is clearly more than capable of making up their own minds, and voting with their feet!
Either way, Dorment not only does a great disservice to the work of Chagall, and the phenomenal exhibition put on by Tate Liverpool, but also to the readers of the Telegraph who might look to him for guidance as to exhibitions worth visiting.
Fortunately, by the crowds I saw still visiting the exhibition in the last few weeks of its installation in Liverpool, the British public is clearly more than capable of making up their own minds, and voting with their feet!
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