Marc Chagall Essay, Research Paper
Marc Chagall
I chose Marc Chagall because I liked the colors that he used in his paintings. I
liked the way his painting technique looked on the canvas. His short brush strokes made it
appear as if one color was blending into another. There are areas in some of his paintings
where there are numerous colors, all made to look as if there was only one color. I also
like the way that his pictures seem to tell a story. When I first looked at Chagall s work, I
thought he just randomly threw ideas onto a canvas, but as I got to reading about him, I
found he put much more thought into his pictures than I had imagined. His use of color
vary from dark and dreary to bright and bold, and put forth feelings of terror and
excitement, depending on the colors which he chose to use. Another reason that I chose to
use Chagall as my artist would probably be because I didn t find that he painted a lot of
human heads, rather, he used animal heads. Seeing as how I m not very skilled when it
comes to drawing the human face, I thought it would be a good idea to choose Marc
Chagall.
Marc Chagall was born in 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia. He was born to a family that
was deeply rooted in Jewish religion and tradition. The Jewish and Russian folklore he
had learned of as a child influenced him deeply and provided the basis for much of his
artwork. It was this sense of fantasy that made Chagall famous, and because of it, he
remains famous. Chagall was considered a painter-poet of the twentieth century. He
transformed both the visible world and human emotions into visual poetry. Rather than
earning praise for this, Chagall heard criticism. The criticism he received for his work
included accusations that he was infatuated with literary, symbolic, and religious ideas.
Chagall moved to Paris in 1910 at the age of 23 and entered the arena of European
painting. His work from 1911 and 1912 are considered to be his first great works. He
adopted a biblical theme in his paintings soon afterwards and often painted crucifixions in
the background, each having reasons for being in that painting, but perhaps a different
reason than the previous one. Whenever Marc Chagall traveled, he took his latest work
with him. He always felt the need to be surrounded by his work.
Chagall altered and enhanced the expressive power of color. His colors were
different from that of the normal French use of color. Poets and thinkers took an interest in
him because of the unexpected widening of the intellectual horizon, in which images of
dream, memory and fantasy became just as important as visible reality. Some described
his work as supernatural. Chagall used what was going on around him in his paintings,
also what happened to him in the past. The past and what was going on around him were
both important and included in his work. An example of how he used the past and what
was going on around him is the oil painting on canvas, The Falling Angel. He
incorporated the feelings of terror of war into his work. He worked on this pie
1923 to 1947. He incorporated what he thought to be significant events from the world
around him and from his life. He didn t work on this painting continuously, rather he took
breaks from his work and when he was inspired to work on that specific piece, he did. He
basically worked on The Falling Angel during the years 1923, 1933 and 1947, when it
was finally completed. In his later years, he added more to his earlier pieces, with the help
of his deepened life experiences, he expanded on his paintings to reflect him. The Falling
Angel depicts war, flight and exile. This picture has historical content including a fleeing
Jew trying to preserve the Torah roll. Chagall said that he would much rather be
considered a painter rather than a poet, because that is what his life was. In his early years
of painting, Chagall used oil on cardboard, and then switched to oil on canvas in his later
years. He also seemed to use a wider variety of color in his later years. Chagall also
seemed to use the wrong color for an object, not using the correct or actual color, he used
what was in his imagination or what he felt best represented that animal or object.
Chagall used complements in his work to make significant parts of a painting stand
out. In general, the forms became massive and not proportional to the rest of the piece, in
order to make certain parts stand out more, or seem more significant. Chagall definitely
creates a sense of feeling in his paintings. What he wants you to feel or think, he expresses
through how large he makes his objects and what colors he uses. The sizes of his objects
are not necessarily balanced or proportional, but they work how he wants them to.
Chagall rarely used jagged edges in his work, rather he used flowing lines, and curvy
edges.
I think Chagall s work seems as if it tells a story, however, I don t think he should
be regarded as a painter-poet. A lot of artists work depicts a story or something that
happened in their life. Chagall used his imagination to tell a story, as do poets and writers,
but so do other painters. His work does put him in a class of his own because it basically
lets you feel the emotions he was feeling by how he painted, what colors he used and what
he chose to paint, the objects, and their size. Chagall went beyond the objects, the
landscape, the nude and the still life, he moved away from the traditional subject matter of
painting, and he moved onto new realms such as dreams, visions and legends. His colors
were inspired by Russian folklore and the work of artists known as the Fauves. His colors
were said to sing, or tell a story. It is Chagall s depictions of the supernatural that
permeate his paintings, his stain-glass windows, mosaics, tapestries, sculptures, graphics
and stage designs from disappearing throughout the decades or becoming lost in what we
know as the he showed promise works. I like Chagall s paintings because of his use of
brilliant colors, and his disregard to size and shape, he draws things how he wants to, not
the way he necessarily sees them.