The style is Cubist although Chagall has not fragmented the apple tree – Perhaps to ensure that this element of the painting remains clear and sure in the world of realism: This in itself an idiosyncrasy: Although entirely conventional and representational of the truth for a deeply religious man, as was Marc Chagall. The ambience of this oil painting is joyful thanks to the fresh green and yellow hues which dominate the composition. The red and blue of the apple tree denote danger – Red is a color we associate with danger: And blue is rarely associated with what is edible in the natural world.
Chagall was living in Paris when he created this oil painting – A place which became a Mecca for the Artist during the early years of his career. Cubism was at its height in Paris during 1912: Although still thought radical at the time. This oil painting marks a milestone for the evolution of twentieth century arts: An iconic image created by an equally iconic artist. Chagall plays with the style of Cubism in this painting but adds touches of naturalistic painting, such as the tree leaves as if to assert his independence from the Cubists.
Apollinaire remarked that the painting was, ‘a large decorative composition that reveals an impressive sense of color, a daring talent, and a curious and tormented soul. ‘ The torment is less obvious and one notices a sense of playfulness in the figures who are full of motion like dancers, with smiling faces. The cheerful greens, pinks, and yellows add to the liveliness. So do the small happy animals peeking around the sides of the painting”. So there you have it. It is actually a playful painting, it is in the style of Cubism (which he used to an extent in some of his paintings) but is also has realistic elements.
His choice of colors make this a ‘happy’ painting too, as do the little animals The art of Marc Chagall was influenced by folklore, religion, and mythology, and these themes were used by the painter to create a unique and visionary style of painting. Marc Chagall lived most of his adulthood in France and is well known for his colorful and exuberant depictions of Jewish life. Chagallis work often addresses personal themes and intimate visions, such as his marriage and his deeply held faith.
While in Paris, Chagall attempted to articulate his Russian-Jewish background with a newly discovered modernism. “Chagall’s unique marriage of these two disparate strands, which gave his work power but also a certain strangeness, is what so pleased the Parisian audiences of his time… no other artist in the Parisian avant-garde of the early twentieth century explicitly depicted scenes from the Torah or Genesis vis-a-vis the cubist formal principles of fragmentation and deconstruction” (SFMOMA 64).
Calvary, 1912 Temptation (Adam and Eve), 1912 La Tour Eiffel, 1911 Paris Through My Window, 1913 1913 1913 The Circus Horse, 1964 Chagall’s association with a circle of friends in Paris (including Robert Delaunay, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Blaise Cendrars) influenced his thinking as a painter: “Paris must have been terrifying to a provincial Russian Jew, but it was also in a heady state of flux in which foreigners like Picasso coud make their mark.
Instead of being discouraged, Chagall seems to have been convinced that he could succeed there. He found allies in the modernist poets Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, but the only notable painter he befriended was Robert Delaunay, whose wife Sonia, a Russian Jewess, was fond of Chagall” (Lewis 37). Friends in Paris Chagall & Modernism “It has always been difficult to untangle Chagall’s two interlocking reputations—as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist.
To be sure, he was both. He experienced modernism’s golden age in Paris, here he forged a highly personal synthesis of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism that was widely influential and that would, after a certain period of incubation, give rise to Surrealism. The artist quickly made the acquaintance of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who were busy developing their theory of Cubism, Robert Delaunay and the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, among many others. Chagall carefully studied the artistic innovations and movements of the past 60 years. starting with the Impressionists and ending with the Pointillists, Fauves and Cubists.
He particularly admired the bold and eccentric brush of Vincent Van Gogh. The Cubist influence can clearly be seen in such works as I and the Village (1911), The Poet (1911) and Adam and Eve (1912). Cubism and Impressionism, however, with their analytical and almost scientific approach to composition and color, did not suit Chagall and he quickly moved beyond these styles into something that can best be described as a blend of Expressionism and Symbolism. These, Guillaume Apollinaire, who became Chagall’s close friend, described as “supernatural” and, later, as “surreal”.
The later Surrealism Movement would name itself after these very words of Apollinaire. Indeed, Chagall would be a major influence on the Surrealists, though never a surrealist himself. During this period, Chagall departed from the early flat techniques and borrowed somewhat from the popular movements. “Adam and Eve” (1912) is an example of Chagall’s blatant attempt to combine Cubism and Futurism. He faceted the figures, displaced the parts, and swirled the pair into perpetual motion.
Curiously, though, subtle symbols appear that take on greater importance in subsequent works – symbols like dancing and resting goats hidden in the facets and strangely-turned heads as they attach to the bodies. But the paintings produced during this period are still eclectic. One can’t be sure if Chagall is responding to influences or simply trying his wings. “The Poet Mazin” (1911-’12) clearly has nothing to do with Cubism. In fact, the work with its wide color areas is painterly and nearly abstract in its brevity. Reclining Nude” (1911) almost resembles a Matisse nude, except for the small Menorah symbol (which may be unintentional) that appears over the nude’s belly. One of my favorite Chagall paintings from his Cubist period is ‘Adam and Eve’. For me, this represents the true Cubist style with the two figures broken down into geometric shapes and viewed from different angles. You can still depict that this is Adam and Eve with the shape of the tree and the apple at the center of the painting. Again, this shows Chagall’s interest in biblical themes.
I feel this painting is perhaps the most easily likened with Picasso’s work. For six months in 1909-10 Chagall was taught by none other than the great set and costume designer Leon Bakst, who was then creating the lush sets and costumes for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes using hot oranges, shocking pinks and boiling ultramarines that perfectly suited the bold, Slavic rhythms of Stravinsky’s music and Fokine’s choreography. Bakst set the young artist’s imagination free by cautioning him against refinement and encouraging him to simplify form and to liberate his brushwork.
Above all, he taught Chagall to achieve chromatic harmonies in strongly contrasting colours. Bakst changed the young artist’s life, and when he moved to Paris to work with Diaghilev in the spring of 1911, the 23 year-old Chagall followed. Speaking no French and knowing only a handful of Russians he made his way to that year’s Salon des Independents to see the cubists all Paris was talking about. Only it wasn’t the work of Picasso and Braque that hung in room 41 of the Salon that year, but the “Salon cubists” – Henri Le Fauconnier, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, and Robert Delaunay.
Chagall understood instinctively that to become a modern artist he had to abandon traditional perspective and assimilate the fractured geometrical planes of cubism into his work. But what he could not have known at that stage was that he was looking at feeble imitations of cubism, not the real thing. He took Gleizes as his model and enrolled in the school where Le Fauconnier and Metzinger taught. In the Tate show we are able to see the effect they had on his work in the second version of Birth.
In the 1911 picture the roof seems to have come off and the house has become a fairground or circus where figures tumble from the sky and farm animals sit down to dinner. 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. Certainly the brash colours and fairy-tale imagery are Chagallis alone, but ultimately these pictures, like Le Fauconnier’s, are pastiche cubism – only now they are an imitation of an imitation.
Then too, cubism isn’t particularly suited to narrative or genre, but Chagall doesn’t yet know this. But, as always, his timing was right. The young Russian arrived in a Paris still enthralled by the Ballets Russes productions of Scheherazade and The Firebird. 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.
Paris! ” Chagall wrote in his autobiography. “No word sounded sweeter to me! ” By 1911, at age 24, he was there, thanks to a stipend of 40 rubles a month from a supportive member of the Duma, Russia’s elective assembly, who had taken a liking to the young artist. Chagall is clearly adopting the abstract forms and dynamic compositions that characterize much of Cubism, yet he came to reject the movement’s more academic leanings, instead infusing his work with touches of humor, emotion and cheerful color.