Question by Emma: Reasons to like the artist Marc Chagall?
I’m doing a project about Marc Chagall and have to write about why I like his work. I have to write a paragraph about it, and the only reasons I can think of are that I like his unusual, original and quirky style and that I like his use of colour. I can’t really think of much else, so if anyone has any other ideas, I’d appreciate it! Thanks.
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Answers and Views:
Answer by judygreeneyes
I think there are many reasons to find Chagall interesting as a person and as an artist:
1. He created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.
2. He was a pioneer of modernism, combining several modern forms of art (Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism) into his own unique style and with vibrant colors.
3. Even while combining so many forms of art and using so many different media, he remained a major Jewish artist, creating many images of Jewish life.
4. Picasso respected Chagall’s work greatly. He once said the after Matisse dies “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is”.
5. Until the young Chagall started high school, he had never seen any art, not even drawings. There was no art in his home. The beginning of his interest in being an artist was when he first saw another student drawing. When he tried drawing for himself, he found it very rewarding and exciting.
6. He grew up in Russia, where even if Jews were smart, creative, or talented, they were always considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society. When he started painting, a Jew either had to hide that he was a Jew, or he had to be a “Jewish painter”, painting works of Jewish art. Of course, this is the path Chagall chose, to express his heritage in his painting.
7. When Chagall was able to leave Russia he moved to Paris, during the time that Cubism was very popular. Chagall’s art was much more brightly colorful than the art during the Cubist period. He got a lot of recognition since his art was so different, and yet you can see the Cubist influence in the way his pictures look fractured. He eventually went back to his hometown in Russia.
8. Chagall never lost that love of his heritage and his hometown, so he frequently painted pictures of the city in which he grew up.
9. Chagall influenced many other painters, for example the new movement of Surrealist painters. Chagall merged human and animal features in many art works, and people or things flying through the air, which fit in perfectly with this new style of art that used illogical mixtures of images.
10. Even though he was Jewish, Chagall became one of the most famous and prestigious artists in Russia.
11. I think it is very impressive that his colorful and unusual style of art translated so well into other media besides paintings. He illustrated books, made theater set designs, and of course created the famous and stunning stained glass windows at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
12. Chagall and his family just barely missed being caught up in the Holocaust, but were smuggled out of France just in the nick of time, and they moved to New York. Frightening to think we might have lost him.
13. While Chagall lived in New York he continued to become more and more famous and had large museum exhibitions. Eventually he moved back to Paris, and created all sorts of different works, like sculptures and ceramics, wall tiles, painted vases, plates and jugs. He also began working in larger-scale formats, producing large murals, stained glass windows, mosaics and tapestries, and even the ceiling for the Paris Opera house. One of the things that impresses me so much about Chagall is that his artistic style was uniquely his own — it was not like any other artist’s art and it really expressed who he was. He was also versatile, creating so many different formats of art. He felt that stained glass windows he created were some of his greatest works, possibly because he valued color and light so greatly. The tapestries he wove, (some are in Israel in the Parliament building), are even more valuable than most of his other work.
To summarize, Chagall was a tremendously talented and unique artist whose art works are loved by people all over the world for their uniqueness, for his obvious love of his heritage, and because they evoke emotions.
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