A quarter of a century has passed since the famous theater panels Marc Chagall, about the work on which the artist wrote: “ He depicted the ancestors of the modern actor: here is a wandering musician, a wedding jester, a dancer, a Torah copyist, he is also the first poet-dreamer and, finally, a couple of acrobats on stage", have been restored.

A cycle of nine works, of which only seven have survived, Chagall performed by order of the State Jewish Theater (GOSET) under the direction of Alexei Granovsky. Founded in 1920 in Petrograd, the theater moved to Moscow a year later and first occupied a building in Chernyshevsky Lane, but two years later moved to where the Moscow Drama Theater on Malaya Bronnaya is located today.

Chagall designed the hall where in 1921 a performance (the first in the repertoire) was shown at an evening in memory of the writer Sholom Aleichem. The artist worked for two months and is said to have completed the process just a few minutes before the curtain went up.

The legendary actor Solomon Mikhoels, according to legend, looked at the sketches of the panel for a long time and said: “You know, I studied your sketches. And I understood them. This made me completely change the interpretation of the image. I learned to use my body, gesture, word in a different way.

Panel "Introduction to the Jewish Theater"
1920

Large panel "Introduction to the theater", full of characters, which, as always, can be solved with curiosity, was intended for the central wall. In the piers between the windows, Chagall placed gigantic allegories of art forms, including “Music” (“Wandering Musician”), “Theater” (“Wedding Jester”), “Dance” (“Dancer”), “Literature” (“ Torah Scribe).

It is curious that the action in the compositions does not unfold from right to left, as in Hebrew, but from left to right. The restorers managed to find out that the master mixed clay into the tempera and gouache, making the images glow from the inside.

"Theater", "Music", "Dance"
1920

In 1949, GOSET was liquidated, and Chagall's works ended up in Tretyakov Gallery.

After restoration and display in the museum in 1991, the panels went on tour, over the years having managed to visit forty-five cities around the world. And only now, for their return to the permanent exhibition of the museum on Krymsky Val, a whole hall is finally allotted for the Chagall cycle, the opening of which will take place on July 16.

Marc Chagall. Above the city. 1918, Moscow

The paintings of Marc Chagall (1887-1985) are surreal and unique. His early work Over the City is no exception.

The main characters, Marc Chagall himself and his beloved Bella, are flying over their native Vitebsk (Belarus).

Chagall portrayed the most pleasant feeling in the world. Feeling of mutual love. When you can't feel the ground under your feet. When you become one with your loved one. When you don't notice anything around. When you just fly from happiness.

The background of the painting

When Chagall began painting Above the City in 1914, they had known Bella for 5 years. But 4 of which they spent apart.

He is the son of a poor Jewish handyman. She is the daughter of a wealthy jeweler. At the time of meeting, a completely unsuitable candidate for an enviable bride.

He went to Paris to study and make a name for himself. Came back and got it. They married in 1915.

This happiness was written by Chagall. Happy to be with the love of your life. Despite the difference in social status. Despite the protests of the family.

The main characters of the picture

With the flight, everything is more or less clear. But you may wonder why the lovers do not look at each other.

Perhaps because Chagall depicted souls happy people and not their bodies. Indeed, bodies cannot fly. But souls can.

Marc Chagall. Above the city (detail). 1918 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

And the souls do not have to look at each other. They need to feel connected. Here we see him. Each soul has one hand, as if they really have almost merged into a single whole.

He, as a carrier of a stronger masculine principle, is written more roughly. in a cubic manner. Bella, on the other hand, is graceful in a feminine way and is woven from rounded and smooth lines.

And the heroine is dressed in soft blue. But it does not merge with the sky, because it is gray.

The couple stands out well against the background of such a sky. And it seems as if it is very natural to fly above the ground.

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The image of the city

It seems that we see all the signs of a town, or rather a large village, which Vitebsk was 100 years ago. There are churches and houses here. And even more pompous building with columns. And, of course, a lot of fences.

Marc Chagall. Above the city (detail). 1918 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

But still, the city is not like that. The houses are deliberately slanted, as if the artist does not own perspective and geometry. Such a childish approach.

This makes the town more fabulous, toy. It enhances our feeling of love.

Indeed, in this state, the world around is significantly distorted. Everything becomes happier. And much is not noticed at all. The lovers don't even notice the green goat.

Why is the goat green

Marc Chagall loved green color. Which is not surprising. Still, it is the color of life, youth. And the artist was a person with a positive outlook. What is his phrase “Life is an obvious miracle” worth.

He was a Hasidic Jew by origin. And this is a special worldview that is instilled from birth. It is based on the cultivation of joy. Hasidim should even pray joyfully.

Therefore, it is not surprising that he portrayed himself in a green shirt. And the goat in the background is green.

Marc Chagall. A fragment with a green goat in the painting "Above the City".

In other pictures, he even has green faces. So the green goat is not the limit.

Marc Chagall. Green violinist (fragment). 1923-1924 Guggenheim Museum, New York

But this does not mean that if a goat, then it is certainly green. Chagall has a self-portrait, where he paints the same landscape as in the painting “Above the City”.

And there is a red goat. The picture was created in 1917, and the color red - the color of the revolution that has just erupted - penetrates the artist's palette.

Marc Chagall. Self portrait with palette. 1917 Private collection

Why are there so many fences

Fences are surreal. They don't frame the yards the way they should. And they stretch in an endless string, like rivers or roads.

In Vitebsk, in fact, there were many fences. But they, of course, just surrounded the houses. But Chagall decided to arrange them in a row, thereby highlighting them. Making them almost a symbol of the city.

It is impossible not to mention this quick-faced man under the fence.

Like looking at the picture first. And cover feelings of romance, airiness. Even the green goat does not spoil the pleasant impression.

And suddenly the eye stumbles upon a man in an indecent pose. The sense of idyll begins to dissipate.

Marc Chagall. Detail of the painting "Above the city".

Why does the artist deliberately add a spoonful of ... fly in the ointment to a barrel of honey?

Because Chagall is not a storyteller. Yes, the world of lovers is distorted, it becomes like a fairy tale. But it's still life, with its mundane and mundane moments.

And in this life there is a place for humor. It's bad to take everything too seriously.

Why Chagall is so unique

To understand Chagall, it is important to understand him as a person. And his character was special. He was easy man, outgoing, talkative.

He loved life. believed in true love. Knew how to be happy.

And he really did manage to be happy.

Lucky, many will say. I don't think it's about luck. And in a special attitude. He was open to the world and trusted the world. Therefore, willy-nilly, he attracted the right people, the right customers.

Hence - a happy marriage with his first wife Bella. Successful emigration and recognition in Paris. Long, very long life (the artist lived for almost 100 years).

Of course, one can recall a very unpleasant story with Malevich, who literally "took away" his school from Chagall in 1920. Having enticed all his students with very bright speeches about Suprematism *.

Including because of this, the artist and his family left for Europe.

He lived for almost a century, was a Soviet commissar, but gained world fame in exile. The largest exhibition of paintings by Marc Chagall has opened in Moscow. It's called "Hello Motherland": famous artist- our compatriot.

He was born at the end of the century before last in Vitebsk. The canvases were brought literally from all over the world: from Russian and foreign museums, as well as from private collections. For the first time, visitors to the exhibition will see the works of Chagall brought together - from early Vitebsk works to masterpieces of the French period.

One of the first to see the exposition was our correspondent Alexander Kazakevich. Through the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, he walked with the granddaughters of the great master.

It is so officially announced that today is the opening of the largest exhibition of Marc Chagall. In fact, the exhibition opened a little earlier, when two of his granddaughters flew in from Paris. They walked enchanted among the still unassembled gigantic exposition. Especially long lingering at the portraits of Bella Chagall - their Russian grandmother.

Meret Meyer, Chagall's granddaughter: "This is my grandmother, but the little figure is my mother, here she is probably only a year old."

These magical flights and Bella's hugs became a favorite theme of Mark Zakharovich. Meret knows that she is very similar to her grandmother.

Meret Meyer, Chagall's granddaughter: "I knew my grandmother only from pictures. This one is my favorite, she was always in my parents' house and I always felt how much tenderness and love comes from her."

Bella Meyer, Chagall's granddaughter: "I was named after my grandmother, so she was my ideal, which I always imitated."

But it was the granddaughters who had to say whether it was possible or not to collect the most famous paintings masters from all over the world - from the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, museums in New York, Paris, Nice, private collections. So full of Chagall has not yet been collected.

In the Tretyakov Gallery, Chagall has a special relationship, he is called the "breadwinner" here, because even in the most difficult times his paintings were always invited to participate in Western exhibitions - this was paid for and replenished the small budget of the Tretyakov Gallery.

For gallery employees, there are many intimate details here. These are Chagall's works for the Jewish theatre. When he flew to the USSR in 1973, he wept when he saw that they had been preserved, and put his autographs on the works, confusing Latin and Cyrillic letters from excitement.

Ekaterina Selezneva, curator of the exhibition: "We all owe Chagall, and that's why today we read the title as "Hello, Chagall".

The mysterious man and his magical art. He compared Paris with Vitebsk, from where he had to emigrate, and his work with the work of Charlie Chaplin. He also reminded the twentieth century of little man in his joys and his love. Chagall wrote: "Perhaps Europe will love me, and with it my Russia." To see these canvases together in Moscow, true connoisseurs of Chagall flew from Europe and America. For example, Chagall's "Trinity" according to his will is forbidden to be taken out of the Museum of Nice. But here she is in Moscow. As an exception. And all visitors understand that once again such a world phenomenon of the master to his homeland may not happen again.

An entire hall of the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val is now dedicated to Marc Chagall, a legend of the Russian avant-garde, one of the most significant artists of world art of the 20th century. For the first time after the restoration, it will be possible to see the entire cycle of panels created by the master for the Jewish Theater, and not only.

In the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery - big collection graphics by Marc Chagall, including illustrations for "Dead Souls", which the author personally presented to the gallery, but there are not so many paintings - only 12. But some are real hits. One of them - "Above the city" - what is it worth. A series of panels created by Chagall for the Jewish Theater is in great demand. They were seen in forty-five cities around the world, but in their native walls, as part of a permanent exhibition, they will be shown together for the first time. This series was created by Chagall in the 1920s, when he left his native Vitebsk and the school he created after disagreements with Kazimir Malevich, moved to Moscow and immediately received a large order.

“Chagall immediately said that he would paint a large panel and would write these things in order to make a kind of tuning fork, an introduction to the theater, and that with his painting he wants to fight false beards, the naturalism that existed in the theater,” says the curator of the department paintings of the late XIX - early XX century Tretyakov Gallery Lyudmila Bobrovskaya.

The artist worked on the scenery for two months, created nine panels, only seven survived. The largest is "Introduction to Jewish Theatre". The fate of these works by Marc Chagall is difficult, as well as the Jewish theater itself, which moved, and in 1949 was completely closed. Then the works ended up in the Tretyakov Gallery and waited a very long time for restoration.

“In 1973, when Chagall came to Moscow, he came to us, and these things were rolled out to him in the Serov Hall. He was insanely happy - he did not hope that they were alive, and even put a signature on some things, they were not there. He did not perceive his works as easel works,” explains Lyudmila Bobrovskaya.

Marc Chagall often emphasized his nationality - he wrote poetry in Yiddish, created stained-glass windows for the synagogue, but it is difficult to call him a Jewish artist, he is still a cosmopolitan, his artistic language understandable on all continents. For example, the Japanese love him very much, and for a long time. In the Land of the Rising Sun, queues line up for his exhibitions.

Chagall basically did not join any groups, it is difficult to call him an adherent of any particular direction, although he himself said to himself: "I am a realist, I love the earth." Chagall can be called fabulous artist, the origins of his work - in childhood, when it seems that everything is possible. And a goat can be green, and people can soar in the clouds.

The exhibition “Marc Chagall. The origins of the artist's creative language”, timed to coincide with his 125th birthday. The exposition focuses on little-known graphics, it also includes examples of Jewish folk art and Russian popular prints.

Going into exile in 1922, Marc Chagall wrote: “Neither tsarist nor Soviet Russia needs me. They don't understand me, I'm a stranger here. But Rembrandt certainly loves me. And maybe, after Europe, my Russia will love me. The forecast was fully justified, although the artist had to wait half a century for recognition in his homeland. In 1973 he came to Moscow to open his personal exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery. However, full-fledged recognition, accompanied by the love of the general public, happened after the death of Chagall - in perestroika times. Pushkin Museum arranged in 1987 a large retrospective of the master, which gained wild popularity: the line to the museum was occupied from the night. And a relatively recent, 2005, project of the Tretyakov Gallery called "Hello, Motherland!" enjoyed great success

The current exposition in the Engineering Corps can be considered a kind of set of footnotes and comments on the previous "folio".

There are no popularly beloved hits like "Walks over Vitebsk" or "Fiddler on the Roof" here, but there are one and a half hundred exhibits with a more chamber sound. Most of them are not familiar to our viewers. According to the curator of the exhibition, Ekaterina Selezneva (in her free time she works as the director of the international relations department of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation), almost all of these materials were nominated seven years ago for participation in the Hello, Motherland! project, but did not make it into the final composition. Presumably, primarily due to the fact that they faded against the backdrop of large-scale canvases. At the same time, it was decided to arrange in the indefinite future a separate exhibition of graphics and small-format painting in order to focus on the roots and origins of Chagall's art. As Meret Meyer, the artist's granddaughter, joked at a press conference, "if you liken the exhibition to a child, then seven years of gestation could lead to the birth of a certain monster." However, the “baby” presented to the public came out quite cute - at least without developmental deviations. Although you can’t call him a child prodigy either.

It's no secret that the art of Marc Chagall was the result of a powerful synthesis of several styles, manners and visual cultures at once. The artist folded his personal myth on a whim and inspiration, borrowing from around not so much ideas and images as "bridgeheads" for his own emotions. But in hindsight, a fair number of parallels can be identified, often quite unconscious.

If the organizers of the exhibition had really pursued the goal of exploring the "origins of the artist's creative language", they would not have limited themselves to including bronze menorahs, ritual glasses, Hanukkah lamps and other signs of shtetl life in the exposition.

Items of this kind, borrowed from the Russian Museum of Ethnography and the Museum of Jewish History in Russia, are extremely appropriate here, but clearly insufficient. And even a small collection of Russian popular prints still does not close the topic of "origins". For complete credibility, Orthodox icons would be required (Chagall highly valued them), and works of cubists with surrealists, and even selected works. domestic classics- from Alexander Ivanov to Mikhail Vrubel. In the catalog of the exhibition, such connections are traced, but in the exposition reality they are not visible. It is easy to see why: such a study would not only require additional (and considerable) organizational efforts, but would also unsettle the so-called "ordinary" viewers. The figure of Marc Chagall would cease to play the main and exclusive role; the public would have to wade through labyrinths of meanings to his works. From the point of view of the project's democratic nature, this approach must have seemed unacceptable to the organizers, although from the point of view of art history it looked very seductive.

But there is no evil without good. The minimization of attracted allusions makes it possible to cling to the work of Chagall directly, without intermediaries.

Although the bet is made on graphics, including printed ones, there is also painting here, so lovers of recognizable Chagall effects will not be left out. The impact of the canvas “Nude over Vitebsk” should be especially dramatic: it should be borne in mind that it was written in 1933, when the artist received two moral injuries at once.

The Nazis then burned a number of Chagall's works after the exhibition "Bolshevism in Art", and the French authorities refused to grant him citizenship, recalling the period of commissariat in Vitebsk. IN in a certain sense this picture can be regarded as a session of spiritual self-healing.

However, almost everything in Chagall is autobiographical, even phantasmagoria. For example, the engraved illustrations for the book “My Life” (it is curious that the artist finished writing the memoir volume at the age of only 37) are filled with surreal details - and yet they are perceived almost as documentary evidence. All the more reliable are the portraits of family members - mother, wife Bella and daughter Ida, cousins, distant relatives. On this occasion, Chagall's phrase is recalled: "If my art did not play any role in the lives of my relatives, then their lives and their actions, on the contrary, greatly influenced my art."

Why not yet another "source of creative language"? The family theme at the exhibition is somewhat unexpectedly continued by fragments of the "Wedding Service" - ceramic dishes painted by the artist in honor of his daughter's marriage.

Meret Meyer claims that they often used this service during their grandfather's life in everyday life.

The exhibition fundamentally does not follow any chronologies, so that in the neighborhood in a single space you can find both youthful sketches and the famous etching series of illustrations for the Bible and for " Dead souls” (these are works of the 1920s - 1930s), and late tinted collages, which were not actually intended for the public, but served as sketches for monumental works, for example, for the Triumph of Music panel for the New York Metropolitan Opera. It is clear that the mixing of different periods of creativity also does not contribute to analytical perception. Although in the case of Chagall, such an exposition method partially justifies itself. All my long life he seemed to circle around his own emotions, among which one of the most important was longing for the lost Vitebsk. So gaps of tens of years between works do not seem so critical.

Tags: Marc Chagall, Tretyakov Gallery