Terra sebv s acta mvsei sabesiensi s

Musical Images as a Reflection of the Artistic Universalism of Marc Chagall 

 

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Chagall’s violinists possess the art of levitation and easily “hang” 

above the roofs of the houses, devotedly rocketing to the moon and clouds 

- sometimes together with their chair - as in Blue Violinist, or perched on the 

foundations of world turned upside-down, as in A Violinist and an Inverted 

World. In the sky, birds - the most creative and sweet-voiced representatives 

of the natural world - become the musicians’ companions. Olga Burenina 

associates the effect of the “floating body” with the development of new 

forms of artistic vision at the beginning of the 20

th

 century, connected with 

polymodality and paradoxiality of perception. Viewing the image of the 

violinist raised into the sky from the panel picture, she observes that music, 

penetrating into space,  

Fig. 3. A Blue Violinist, 1947

Fig. 4.  A Violinist and an Inverted World, 1929 

Fig. 5. A Street Violinist, 1911-1914. Oil 

on canvas, 94.5/69.5 cm. Dusseldorf, 

North Rhine-Westphalian Art Collection

Fig. 6. A Violinist and a Cock, 1982. 

Paper, Lithography, 66/50 cm. Nice, 

National Museum of Marc Chagall 

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L. G. Safiullina, G. I. Batyrshina 

 

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“deprives the habitual form of the classical determinacy and turns one 

object into another. As a result, ... the violinist’s body, vertically hanging in 

the air ... becomes fluid, weakly structured, deprived of not only prominent 

organs (head, hands, legs), but gender differentiation ... [The] flying person 

bears similarity both with caterpillar and with cocoon woven from finest 

fibre.”

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Levitating on high (A Bride with Blue Face, fig. 7) or floating in the air, 

as if jumping (A Painter and His Bride), violinists wrap the enamoured lovers 

with tender musical covers, “repeating” their harmonic relations and motifs, 

“joining” two halves - male and female - into a single unity. The semantics 

of musicians’ flight in Chagall’s art is connected with the ability of art to 

endow the feeling of freedom, delight and happiness, to direct us towards 

beauty and reveal the angelical, the divine in a person.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The position in which the violin is held in Chagall’s canvases is 

schematized, conveying the playing style of  folk performers rather than 

academic string players. The side of  the cheek or the front of  the shoulder 

is used as a support, which does not happen in professional classical 

performance, but is typical of  street musicians. Sometimes Chagall’s 

violinist lowers the instrument down to his torso, inverting it and playing it 

like a small cello (a technique sometimes practiced by village violinists, a 

distant likeness of  which can be seen in ancient viol playing). Sometimes the 

                                                 

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 Burenina 2004. 

Fig. 7. A Bride with Blue Face, 1932. Oil on 

canvas, 100 х 81 cm. Private

 collection 

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Musical Images as a Reflection of the Artistic Universalism of Marc Chagall 

 

75

instrument simultaneously represents the performer’s hand, as in Blue 

Violinist  (fig. 3). The violin is frequently kept at arm’s length, as in the 

picture  Circus Maximus (1968, fig. 8), where the actress, placed in the 

foreground on the back of  giant animal with a bird’s head, demonstrates her 

vaulting skills.  

Sometimes the painter uses mirror images, placing the violin on the 

musician’s right side (even left-handed violinists hold the instrument in their 

left hand) or painting his fingers on the wrong side of  fingerboard, above 

the strings, which would make it impossible to play the instrument. These 

kinds of  “spoonerisms” can also be observed in Chagall’s self-portraits, 

when the painter’s palette and brush change places with each other. Often, 

Chagall’s violinists use all 5 fingers of  the left hand to perform, despite the 

fact that the thumb is not used for playing, being needed as a 

counterbalance on the other side of  the instrument’s neck. The bow is 

occasionally depicted in an arched form, similar to a horn, or turns into a 

“peak,” disproportionally short or wide for the depicted instrument. The 

way the bow is held is also indicative; it resembles the way a paintbrush is 

held, when support is shifted from the forefinger. This speaks of  the fact 

that Chagall does not strive for documental precision in the musician’s pose 

or the position of  his hands: the most important thing for the artist is to 

reconstruct the essence of  the creative act, to accentuate its spiritual 

meaning. It is also important that the violinist’s image in Chagall’s creativity 

is presented by the painter as a creative artist - by himself, using the violin in 

the same Chagall uses his working instruments, the palette and the brush.

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The violinist’s image also appears in Chagall’s graphic works. The pen 

drawing  The Violinist at Night (1939, fig. 9) presents a half-length semi-

section shaped performer, inspired by music, accompanied by the figure of  

naked girl and a sketch of  a goat - a visualization of  the klezmer’s thoughts 

about his beloved (muse) and faithful friend (companion). The gouache 

drawing A Violinist (1926-1927, fig. 10) has a satirical orientation: it shows a 

tipsy musician who has disturbed the district with his fiddling. The woman 

behind the fence looks at the peace-breaker disapprovingly and throws up 

                                                 

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 Natalya Apchinskaya suggests that Chagall identified himself with a musician only in his 

later period of creativity: “The painter in Chagall’s later works is frequently identified not 

with the poet, as it was in 1910, but with the musician, possibly, because music 

presupposes an address not only to the individuum, but also to the masses; it met the 

‘missionary’ orientation of the master’s creativity in that period, clearly demonstrating the 

ability of art to unite people” (Apchinskaya 1995, p. 163). Evidence for this is provided in 

one of the lithographies to the book Fairy Show and Kingdom (1972) by Kamil Burnikel, in 

which the painter depicts himself as a winged band-master, floating above the orchestra 

and the whole earth. However, as follows from the analysis of previous works, Chagall, due 

to universality of his creative thinking, had compared himself to musicians before. 

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