ldquo;When Matisse dies;rdquo; Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s; ldquo;Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.rdquo; As a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of the twentieth century; Marc Chagall achieved fame and fortune; and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known and most-loved paintings of our time. Yet behind this triumph lay struggle; heartbreak; bitterness; frustration; lost love; exilemdash;and above all the miracle of survival.Born into near poverty in Russia in 1887; the son of a Jewish herring merchant; Chagall fled the repressive ldquo;potato-coloredrdquo; tsarist empire in 1911 for Paris. There he worked alongside Modigliani and Leacute;ger in the tumbledown tenement called La Ruche; where ldquo;one either died or came out famous.rdquo; But turmoil lay aheadmdash;war and revolution; a period as an improbable artistic commissar in the young Soviet Union; a difficult existence in Weimar Germany; occupied France; and eventually the United States. Throughout; as Jackie Wullschlager makes plain in this groundbreaking biography; he never ceased giving form on canvas to his dreams; longings; and memories. His subject; more often than not; was the shtetl life of his childhood; the wooden huts and synagogues; the goatherds; rabbis; and violinistsmdash;the whole lost world of Eastern European Jewry. Wullschlager brilliantly describes this world and evokes the characters who peopled it: Chagallrsquo;s passionate; energetic mother; Feiga-Ita; his eccentric fellow painter and teacher Bakst; his clever; intense first wife; Bella; their glamorous daughter; Ida; his tough-minded final companion and wife; Vava; and the colorful; tragic array of artist; actor; and writer friends who perished under the Stalinist regime.Wullschlager explores in detail Chagallrsquo;s complex relationship with Russia and makes clear the Russian dimension he brought to Western modernism. She shows how; as Andreacute; Breton put it; ldquo;under his sole impulse; metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting;rdquo; and helped shape the new surrealist movement. As art critic of the Financial Times; she provides a breadth of knowledge on Chagallrsquo;s work; and at the same time as an experienced biographer she brings Chagall the man fully to lifemdash;ambitious; charming; suspicious; funny; contradictory; dependent; but above all obsessively determined to produce art of singular beauty and emotional depth.Drawing upon hitherto unseen archival material; including numerous letters from the family collection in Paris; and illustrated with nearly two hundred paintings; drawings; and photographs; Chagall is a landmark biography to rank with Hilary Spurlingrsquo;s Matisse and John Richardsonrsquo;s Picasso.From the Hardcover edition.
#3206677 in eBooks 2009-07-21 2009-07-21File Name: B001GIOC90
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A trip to the pastBy dseeNice little book about Clayton ~ I enjoyed reading about things I remember from my childhood ... "back in the day". .
