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Lot Essay
Executed in a symphony of color and light, Marc Chagall’s La joie au cirque radiates with a sense of magic and joy. Painted in 1983, the work dates from the zenith of the artist’s career, while he was living in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, on the Côte d’Azur. In this peaceful and scenic corner of the Mediterranean, Chagall was blissfully content as he reflected on his long and successful career. His paintings from this time are dreamlike and joyous, with expressive, dancing brushstrokes. In La joie au cirque, jewel-toned shades tesselate across the monumental canvas, the swathes of color dappled like theater spotlights, enhancing the feeling of spectacle and performance in this circus scene.
The circus theme was recurrent in Chagall’s oeuvre, first appearing in his work as early as 1908, and the subject had similarly entranced a number of artists, from Georges Seurat and Edgar Degas, to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Fernand Léger. Yet, for the French writer and intellectual, Louis Aragon, the distinction between Chagall’s renderings of the circus and those of his predecessors was the artist’s remarkable ability to invoke the physical feeling of being in the audience: “only in Chagall do all the senses play a prominent role” (“Chagall’s Circus,” 1968, in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 196). Indeed, La joie au cirque possesses an immersive quality, conjured by the kaleidoscopic swirls of color and the varying scales of the performers floating across the canvas. Most of the acrobats, musicians, and clowns appear much larger than the circus stands that arch across the composition, towering over the crowds of spectators. Their increased size captures the enthralling, transporting quality of the art form. There is an episodic element to the composition, the performers further fragmented into vignettes by the play of color. Through the fluid juxtaposition of these microcosmic scenes, Chagall transcends time, bringing together a multitude of different performances, or segments of the circus show.
Chagall’s love for the circus was lifelong, and he recalled attending the shows of touring troupes as a boy in his hometown of Vitebsk. In the 1920s he regularly visited the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris with his publisher and dealer Ambroise Vollard, as he embarked on a series of etchings of circus scenes, and in 1956 he was invited to watch the filming of a circus movie in Vence. In addition to its lighthearted air of entertainment and excitement, La joie au cirque also emanates a sense of nostalgia and memory, as, in the latter half of his ninth decade, the artist recalled these formative experiences. On the left hand side of the canvas, a nocturnal Paris emerges, the Eiffel Tower distinct under the glow of a crescent moon, its reflection gleaming up from the waters of the Seine. To the right, the terracotta rooftops of Chagall’s native Vitebsk stretch out into the distance. For Chagall, the circus offered a mirror for life itself, a harmonious fusion of fantasy and reality, joy and sorrow, and comedy and tragedy in a way that paralleled human existence. Here, the dazzling performance takes place against a backdrop of two of the cities that the artist knew and loved best, further endowing the work with a poignant and personal quality.
The star performers of the circus—clowns, equestrians, and acrobats—were among Chagall’s favorite motifs, alongside musicians, bouquets, animals, and young lovers. Chagall found himself repeatedly drawn to the enduring and beguiling appeal of the circus characters, who he felt were the heralds of an enchanting dream world. “These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have made themselves at home in my visions. Why? Why am I so touched by their make-up and grimaces? With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up I dream of painting new psychic distortions” (“The Circus,” 1967; in ibid., p. 197).
The circus theme was recurrent in Chagall’s oeuvre, first appearing in his work as early as 1908, and the subject had similarly entranced a number of artists, from Georges Seurat and Edgar Degas, to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Fernand Léger. Yet, for the French writer and intellectual, Louis Aragon, the distinction between Chagall’s renderings of the circus and those of his predecessors was the artist’s remarkable ability to invoke the physical feeling of being in the audience: “only in Chagall do all the senses play a prominent role” (“Chagall’s Circus,” 1968, in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 196). Indeed, La joie au cirque possesses an immersive quality, conjured by the kaleidoscopic swirls of color and the varying scales of the performers floating across the canvas. Most of the acrobats, musicians, and clowns appear much larger than the circus stands that arch across the composition, towering over the crowds of spectators. Their increased size captures the enthralling, transporting quality of the art form. There is an episodic element to the composition, the performers further fragmented into vignettes by the play of color. Through the fluid juxtaposition of these microcosmic scenes, Chagall transcends time, bringing together a multitude of different performances, or segments of the circus show.
Chagall’s love for the circus was lifelong, and he recalled attending the shows of touring troupes as a boy in his hometown of Vitebsk. In the 1920s he regularly visited the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris with his publisher and dealer Ambroise Vollard, as he embarked on a series of etchings of circus scenes, and in 1956 he was invited to watch the filming of a circus movie in Vence. In addition to its lighthearted air of entertainment and excitement, La joie au cirque also emanates a sense of nostalgia and memory, as, in the latter half of his ninth decade, the artist recalled these formative experiences. On the left hand side of the canvas, a nocturnal Paris emerges, the Eiffel Tower distinct under the glow of a crescent moon, its reflection gleaming up from the waters of the Seine. To the right, the terracotta rooftops of Chagall’s native Vitebsk stretch out into the distance. For Chagall, the circus offered a mirror for life itself, a harmonious fusion of fantasy and reality, joy and sorrow, and comedy and tragedy in a way that paralleled human existence. Here, the dazzling performance takes place against a backdrop of two of the cities that the artist knew and loved best, further endowing the work with a poignant and personal quality.
The star performers of the circus—clowns, equestrians, and acrobats—were among Chagall’s favorite motifs, alongside musicians, bouquets, animals, and young lovers. Chagall found himself repeatedly drawn to the enduring and beguiling appeal of the circus characters, who he felt were the heralds of an enchanting dream world. “These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have made themselves at home in my visions. Why? Why am I so touched by their make-up and grimaces? With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up I dream of painting new psychic distortions” (“The Circus,” 1967; in ibid., p. 197).