Picturing Chagall

Goldin, Renee

Picturing Chagall Chagall—Portrait of an Artist Produced and directed by Kim Evans • 1985 London Weekend Television Distributed by Home Visions. 52-minule video, J39.95 Reviewed by Renee...

...Trained in ceramics, she now pursues metalsmithing and makes a living creating Judaic textiles, especially prayer shawls and chupahs...
...landscape, Christian vs...
...The comments and connections to Chagall's work are contrived and miss the obvious—that the aerialists, like Chagall's figures, defy gravity...
...For those who want more depth, the film will not be satisfying, though it is difficult to cover eighty years of work plus a very important childhood in less than an hour...
...How long did it take him...
...Confronted by one comment attributed to Chagall, this ephebe replies, "I don't believe it* The culture-seeking viewer may forgive or even sympathize with the narrator's inability to see Chagall's artistic logic, but the artist will be disappointed by the virtual absence of discussion of technique There are a few clips of Chagall at work in his eighties, both painting and working on stained glass windows for Hadassah Hospital of Hebrew University, but little is explained and many technical questions remain...
...and a sudden blitz (D of new ideas...
...If you want to learn more, go to the library, as perhaps producer Evans should have done, and go beyond the autobiography to books such as the one by French modern art curator Jean Cassou (Praeger, 1965), done late enough in Chagall's life to see the artist more wholly, and done with a scholar's insight, a poets sensitivity and a friend's intimacy—features lacking in this (nevertheless appealing] video...
...The finat portion of the film deals with Chagall's fascination with the circus, and we actually see scenes from a French circus such as Chagall might have attended...
...We see what Marc thought of Bella, but we also hear a few of Bella's memories of Marc She describes the origin of a famous work, The Birthday...
...Oh, its very good" The second highlight of the film is the attention given to Chagall's religious works...
...glimpses...
...the party didn't last long...
...they swept me with them...
...The poem is dedicated to 80 Jewish artists whom he knew personally who perished in the Holocaust They were taken to the death baths Where they got the taste of their own sweat That was when they saw the light of their unpainted pictures...
...you soared up to the ceiling...
...Renee Goldin is a Judaica artist...
...She has a degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan...
...Jew, and Chagall doesn't go along with this The commentary is replete with cliches: "a bright new age...
...then together we flew...
...Although scholarly commentary is lacking in the video, and few examples of his religious paintings are shown, those shown are immensely powerful...
...She also reviews Jewish art shows for art magazines...
...We end up with a beautiful visual display, littered with journalistically provocative but transparently insensitive commentary...
...are not good stage settings at all but are wonderful works of art One wishes all those people [who are dancing] would stop getting in front of them" Two parts of the film deserve special recognition...
...Maybe because Chagall is the first and only world-class artist to paint as a Jew, the narrator doesn't know how to deal with him...
...he fell on his feet...
...profane, religion vs...
...The first is the sensitive way that it deals with Bella, the artisfs first wife...
...For example, Chagall's dominance of any space he touches is shown in a critic's description of his sets and costumes for a Russian ballet The four backdrops...
...You plunged the brushes into the paint so fast that red and blue, black and white flew through the air...
...He keeps looking for the source of the "pixie dust" that enabled Chagall and his menage to fly...
...There is some interesting material incorporated into the film: excerpts from Chagall's own autobiography (at age 35, in 1922), archival footage from his early years in Paris, and a vast array of images depicting Chagall's work Chagall is quickly and dramatically shown to be someone unique and deserving of our interest The visual effects are heightened by corresponding musical selections...
...Did he always make sketches first or did his paint sometimes, as Bella implied, just fly off the brushes...
...He seems beset with a need to find explanation for the content and direction of the master's work We are led by this persistent but jejune curiosity to explore Chagall's background and influences...
...a British art student in Paris, who occupies a studio in an artists' colony at La Ruche, Montpar-nasse, that had in fact once been used by Chagall...
...See it for its color, see it for its history, see it to get closer to "Israel's brother," Chagall...
...A crucified man wrapped in a taliit and surrounded by scenes of Jewish martyrology, exemplifies Chagall's sense of profound suffering To make this and other scenes of crucifixion and martyrdom even more effective, the voice of an old man with a Russian accent recites a poem composed by the artist in 1950, expressing anguish that he remained alive while so many died...
...How did he do the Opera ceiling—on his back like Michelangelo...
...When showing antique footage of his native home of Vitebsk in White Russia (a town of 80,000), where he was born Moshe Segal, the accompaniment is klezmer music When we see the rotunda of the Paris Opera where Chagall painted the ceiling, we hear a Mozart overture...
...When we see the sets Chagall designed for the We do, however, get some worthwhile Firebird ballet by fellow Russian-in-Paris Stravinsky, we hear, of course, the Firebird music For a popular audience, this treatment of Chagall's work may suffice—an hour's investigation that can be viewed and reviewed at will...
...For the beginning student of painting or art history, or for adult education in synagogues and Jewish community centers, this film can be enriching and valuable...
...He is a photojournalist not a scholar...
...The language, the choice of images, and the lyrical music evoked at the mention of her name are very effective in depicting her as beloved, an auspicious match for her extraordinary husband...
...Pissarros and Modiglianis, our brothers, led along by ropes by the sons of Durer, Cranach and Holbein, led to death in the crematoriums...
...The search for revelation in the work of an important artist seems to fail if the narrator can "doubt if Chagall really knew what he was doing...
...I stand in the desert before piles of slippers, clothes, ash and rubbish, murmuring a single Kaddish...
...The narrator's level of inquiry is inadequate for verbal analysis of the visual paradoxes abundant in Chagall's work...
...Was he inspired or blind...
...52-minule video, J39.95 Reviewed by Renee Goldin in this video, a young man searches for a logic that never existed: ideas and associations that may have appeared in the late artist Marc Chagall's memories, fantasies and dreams...
...What about the earlier years...
...The pair were similar in background, attractiveness, intellect poetic expression and imagination...
...When she delivered a bouquet of flowers to her then-fiance and was about to put them into water:" 'Don't move,' you said, *stay just like that...
...His comments are often simplistic and sometimes disparaging...
...He wants to see separations: holy vs...
...Now they drag themselves along in tatters, barefoot on mute roads, Israel's brothers...

Vol. 13 • October 1988 • No. 7


 
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