Chagall Museum

It being the weekend and having the whole family together for the first time since French class began, we decided to pay for the hokey 'hop on- hop off' double-decker tour of Nice, which turned out to be a complete waste of euros. We did, however, use it as an opportunity to visit the rather out-flung sites of the Matisse and Chagall museums, before hitting the beach and swimming off of the rocky beaches. This day was a treat for both Fish and myself, however the girls melted down after 10 minutes. The only way we got through those 10 minutes were to have them look for chickens in Chagall's paintings. The Matisse museum was wonderful (more on that later) but the Chagall Museum was amazing! Since my first Art History class in college I have been obsessed with Marc Chagall and used my 3 years of university in Scotland as a little bit of an excuse to make pilgrimages to sites that Chagall has ornamented... I visited Nice very briefly 15 years ago and became wet-eyed even then, and this time even more so.

A bit about Marc Chagall....
He was born in what is now Belarus (Vitebsk) to a Hasidic Jewish family (Hasidic Jews believe that God is not just in the Torah but imbued in everything- animals, flowers, everything). Life was good for a while (he trained as an artist in St. Petersburg and even traveled to Paris to live and work for a while, where he did quite well), though his family retained strong and powerful memories of the various pogroms (government-organized attacks) that enveloped their villages. As a result of the pogroms, Jewish communities in Russia became self-sufficient as a form of protecting themselves.

After a few years in Paris he went home to his fiance Bella, somehow convincing her family that he- an artist- could support her. Shortly after their marriage, the first world war happened and the borders were closed... during this time his art was intensely happy as he and Bella were very much in love. By the end of the First World war, though, famine swept Russia and he and Bella were granted leave to move to Paris.

In Paris, Chagall painted and worked with the avant-garde artist of the post-war years (such as Picasso) making a name for himself. However, even in those fast-moving years of artistic experimentation within cubism and fauvism Chagall retained a unique vision of the lens through which he viewed all events: his life, his world in Russia, complete with farm animals and rabbis and fiddlers in full color. A theme he continued through his life's work was the role of Jesus as a martyr, just as his family was in the Russian pogroms... he painted Jesus in his Jewish prayer shawl in the midst of a burning Russian village, running chickens, wailing rabbis and flying oxen. Sadly, just as Chagall was making a name for himself in Europe, Hitler came upon the scene and named him a 'degenerate artist' (Hitler was turned down from an art school and after becoming the fuhrer declared realist and socialist art the only acceptable form). Chagall, amongst many other 'degenerates', had to flee. Where to? New York, of course... this being the reason that New York is now widely regarded as the head of the world art scene.

Anyway, Chagall was able to return (to Nice) after world war II, but after the atrocities he had witnessed and heard about, took up old testament themes even more, and painted even further those long-ago Vitebsk memories of his childhood. The Chagall Museum in Nice has a very impressive collection of his old testament paintings along with a series of stained glass panels similar to the ones he created for a synagogue Israel.

Fish and I were very moved by Chagall's work for a few reasons: Fish has lived and seen areas where the communist government had erased these villages because of their beliefs in Russia. My great grandmother left Russia for the exact same reason: Persecution and hunger, and the acknowledgement that she could not live as a Jew in Russia any longer. The realization that they had to leave their culture and their families behind is heartbreaking. But mostly: color! Chagall's gift with color as a form of expression is remarkable.