Marc Chagall on Art and Culture , and: Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative (review)

Abstract

BENJAMIN HARSHAV, ed. Marc Chagall on Art and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 225.BENJAMIN HARSHAV. Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. xx + 1026.Almost all discussions of modern Jewish art begin with Marc Chagall. Chagall's whimsical paintings of Russian shtetl life - complete with an iconic fiddler on the roof-and imagery based on the Hebrew Bible have long served Jewish culture as a proud example of artistic production. Tapestries and mosaics based on Chagall's designs decorate Israel's Knesset, he created the twelve stained-glass windows that enclose the synagogue at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, and the Israel Museum's collection boasts ten works on canvas and more than two hundred prints and drawings. Avram Kampf's survey of Jewish art in the modern era, in which Chagall's name appears in the title (Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in 20th Century Art), further asserts the artist's prominence in the Jewish canon; Kampf features thirty-six works by Chagall, with no other artist showing more than nineteen (Chagall's Russian compatriot El Lissitzky).1This Jewish fascination with Chagall (born Moyshe Shagal)-as opposed to art history in general-reaches its finest moment in Benjamin Harshav's new publications. It is not the visual matter of Chagall's life, however, that Harshav explores in his two volumes on the artist. Instead, in Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Harshav presents and translates from French, Russian, and primarily Yiddish the artist's public comments, including essays, articles, speeches, and lectures, as well as two interviews and the first book on Chagall's art (published in Russia in 1918). In Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative, Harshav reconstructs Chagall's world through one third of the artist's correspondence, to which the author had access. Harshav includes the artist's letters in addition to responses from his correspondents, and other letters relevant to Chagall's life; for example, communications written by his common-law wife Virginia Haggard, his second wife, Valentina Brodsky, his daughter Ida, and Monroe Wheeler, director of exhibitions and publications at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1940s. Other documents constitute an early version of his oft-published autobiography (1924; the better-known Ma Vie was reworked and then published in 1931) and reviews of his work, complete with Harshav's annotations. An exhaustive index makes these documents easily accessible (pp. 1005-17). comprehensiveness of these materials, translated from French, Yiddish, Russian, German, and Hebrew, is extraordinary, truly an example of international detective work (p. xii), to use the author's own words. Looked at as a whole, the primary documents within these two books fully explicate the influence of Jewish and Yiddish ideas on Chagall's art and thinking, even more firmly securing him as an artist of the Jewish experience.The more concise Marc Chagall on Art and Culture opens with a preface delineating Harshav's intent, including the caveat that he and his co-translator Barbara Harshav intend to present the data without commentary, allowing the reader to proffer his or her own interpretations (p. xiii). Nonetheless, an introductory essay follows, The Texts of a Multicultural Artist, setting the stage for the book. Here Harshav presents Chagall's basic biography and does in fact provide some analysis of the materials found in the subsequent pages. Harshav's main point is that Chagall's identity was multifaceted, an amalgamation of his Jewish, French, and Russian identities. After reading Chagall's copious comments on such topics as a Jewish art museum, Jewish and Yiddish culture, his impressions of French painting, and his hometown of Vitebsk, the reader can see how Harshav reached his conclusion. Harshav's point is valid; however it is important to note that Chagall's blending of his identities does not constitute an isolated case and, further, to understand that the artist's openness about his Jewishness was not always the norm. …