Lot Essay
Chagall moved back to Paris from Berlin in September of 1923. Upon his return, the Surrealists praised Chagall's exploration of the world of dreams and imagination, and acclaimed him as a prophetic artist who combined poetry and visual imagery in his work. Chagall, however, grew tired of the Surrealists' "automatism," which he found to be artificial. As he wrote, "If through Automatism some good paintings have been produced, it does not mean it can be seen as a method.... Everything in Art must be in answer to a beat in our bloodstream, of our whole being, even unconsciously" (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, Chagall: A Retrospective, Paris, 1995, p. 174).
In the late 1920's, Chagall developed a profound interest in his Russian heritage. As an expression of this sentiment, he often devoted the backgrounds of his pictures to symbolic motifs from the paintings of his Russian period, filling the foregrounds with floral still-lifes and figures. Franz Meyer has written about the present painting,
Motifs from previous pictures, like To Russia, Asses and Others of 1911, twice appear behind the flowers. Here the rustic scene has undergone a significant transformation in its passage from the
sketch to the landscape.... In a general way, top and bottom are
now interchanged more frequently. During his first Paris period and again in the revolution years Chagall used that device to give his
pictures an "unreal" dynamism. Its function is still the same,
namely to help combine the various elements--each with its own
peculiar radiation--in a living context from which a picture is
born.... The various motifs move in the picture space without any
pretense to rational order; they are words in a painted poem. The
poetic stream that pervades all these works springs from Chagall's
peculiar gift for poetic imagery. (F. Meyer, op. cit., p. 372)
Chagall himself has written about his imagery,
One cannot make a picture with symbols.... If a work of art is
absolutely authentic, it contains something symbolic as in Klee,
Grünewald, Mozart. One must not start out with the symbol, but
reach the symbol. Symbolism is inevitable.... My symbolic poetry
is unexpected, oriental, situated between China and Europe. (quoted in ibid., p. 14)
In the late 1920's, Chagall developed a profound interest in his Russian heritage. As an expression of this sentiment, he often devoted the backgrounds of his pictures to symbolic motifs from the paintings of his Russian period, filling the foregrounds with floral still-lifes and figures. Franz Meyer has written about the present painting,
Motifs from previous pictures, like To Russia, Asses and Others of 1911, twice appear behind the flowers. Here the rustic scene has undergone a significant transformation in its passage from the
sketch to the landscape.... In a general way, top and bottom are
now interchanged more frequently. During his first Paris period and again in the revolution years Chagall used that device to give his
pictures an "unreal" dynamism. Its function is still the same,
namely to help combine the various elements--each with its own
peculiar radiation--in a living context from which a picture is
born.... The various motifs move in the picture space without any
pretense to rational order; they are words in a painted poem. The
poetic stream that pervades all these works springs from Chagall's
peculiar gift for poetic imagery. (F. Meyer, op. cit., p. 372)
Chagall himself has written about his imagery,
One cannot make a picture with symbols.... If a work of art is
absolutely authentic, it contains something symbolic as in Klee,
Grünewald, Mozart. One must not start out with the symbol, but
reach the symbol. Symbolism is inevitable.... My symbolic poetry
is unexpected, oriental, situated between China and Europe. (quoted in ibid., p. 14)