521
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www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro
Terra Sebus: Acta Musei Sabesiensis, Special Issue, 2014, p. 67-104
MUSICAL IMAGES AS A REFLECTION OF THE ARTISTIC
UNIVERSALISM OF MARC CHAGALL
Liliya Garifullovna SAFIULLINA
Gulnara Ibragimovna BATYRSHINA
Introduction
The works of Marc Chagall achieve an organic synthesis of art, literature,
architecture, theater, circus and music. The holistic picture he creates of the
world involves the participation of different kinds of art, speaking through
the language of colors, sounds, voices, rhythms, acrobatics and dance.
Although Chagall’s artistic and literary connections, as well as the images he
captures of circuses, buffoonery and town squares have been studied in
detail, the theme of music in his art has not yet received in-depth coverage.
Furthermore, the representation of musical components in Chagall’s
paintings aside, conclusions on the senses and meanings in his pictures are
incomplete.
Study perspectives
The theme of music runs through the artistic works of Marc Chagall; it
accompanied the artist throughout his life. Consideration of musical
iconography in his works reveals the artistic universalism of the personality
and creativity of the artist, and makes it possible to discover new nuances in
the relationship between fine arts and music in the 20
th
century.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is one of the most mysterious painters of
the 20
th
century, affecting the beholder emotionally with his
phantasmagorical personages, mystic colours and incredible sense of
soaring. Belonging equally to Russia and France, his home village in Vitebsk
and Jewish traditions, throughout his long - almost centenary - life, Chagall
often changed countries, cities and continents, absorbing and creatively
elaborating on numerous national, technical and stylistic influences. He
represents a vivid intercultural phenomenon; universal concepts of the
macrocosm were implemented in his creative work. As psychologist Erich
Kazan Federal University, Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation; e-mail:
lilisafi@pochta.ru.
Kazan Federal University, Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation; e-mail:
arpegio@mail.ru.
www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro
L. G. Safiullina, G. I. Batyrshina
68
Neumann notes, his unification of male and female
origins anticipates the
double nature of Chagall’s artistic expression.
1
Tatyana Zatsarnaya
distinguishes the hierotopic character of space in his works, visualizing the
vivid, saturated medium of humans’ internal world.
2
Natalya Apchinskaya
highlights the painter’s reproduction of the integral image of the world -
“incessantly in scope and depth, free-chaotic, and yet, at the same time,
subject to some highly consistent patterns,” through which “the inextricable
connection between present, past and future is realised.”
3
Chagall was not only a painter, graphic artist, glass artist and scene
painter, but also a literary artist. His autobiography
My Life; numerous
articles, essays and lectures included in the book Mark Chagall about Art and
Culture; poems gathered in the collection
The Angel above Roofs; and the text
for the author’s album of lithography, Circus, issued from his pen. Thus,
Chagall was also a memoirist, essayist, publicist and poet, covering various
genres of literature. Literary modes of thinking had a direct impact on the
artistic creativity of the “cornflower man,”
4
filling him with deep content-
richness, multiplicity and symbolism.
5
Following Andre Breton, who
declared the triumphal implementation of metaphor in modern painting
with Chagall, many researchers state that “poetry found a picturesque form
in his creativity, became its internal content.”
6
Aiming to carry out artistic
missionary work, Chagall codified the ideas of freedom, miracles, brotherly
community and the unity of all as the basis of his universe.
Chagall’s creativity presents an organic synthesis of not only painting
and literature, but also architecture, theatre, circus and music, making it
possible to speak of his artistic universalism. The term “artistic
universalism” was developed in literary studies, where it is understood as “a
drive for synthesis at the level of ‘covering’ reality ... and at the level of
apprehension of laws and consistent patterns,”
7
or “the synthesis of genres
or different artistic systems in the creativity of one author.”
8
Olga Studenko
distinguishes “the universalism of integrity” (“universalism of coverage,”
“universalism-encyclopedism”) and the “universalism of bases and
1
Neumann 1996.
2
Zatsarnaya 2011, p. 52.
3
Apchinskaya 1990, p. 5, 13.
4
Description of Chagall according to the poet Voznesensky. http://www.m-
chagall.ru/library/Angel-nad-kryshami1.html, accessed 15 June 2014.
5
Although Chagall himself repeatedly told, that “literariness” for a painter is an unflattering
characteristics (Ge 2013), thus dissociating from vulgarly understood narrativeness in
painting.
6
Vakar 2013.
7
Studenko 2006, p. 284.
8
Shkrabo 2011.
www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro