Musical Images as a Reflection of the Artistic Universalism of Marc Chagall
79
personality and art. Music is depicted as a fate, professional art as a verdict,
persistently accompanying a person throughout his whole life. Apart from
the player’s confluence with his instrument, male and female origins are
combined here. A bifacial androgynous creature (full and half-face), whose
head is covered by a bridal veil and a hat, personifies the eternal striving of
enamoured lovers for the undivided possession of each other. The
uncontrollable affinity of opposites, described in the Greek myth of
Hermaphroditus, and embedded in the imagery of Zbruchky idols by
Slavonic pagans, was represented for Chagall by his happy match with Bella
Rosenfield, and was spurted into his canvases through the imagery of dual
and triune creatures. A friendly animal, accompanying the musician with a
tiny violin, is also present in the picture.
The person-cello is one of Chagall’s stable images which migrate
from work to work. We see variations of it in the etching A Musician (fig.
16); in the paintings Music ( fig. 40), Concert ( fig. 39) and Revolution ( fig. 17); in
the painting of the dome lamp of the Parisian opera, where it is endowed
with wings; and in other works.
In some works, this metamorphosis, the intergrowth of instrument
and its possessor into each other, has not happened completely (Wedding
Candles, A Bride with Blue Face, fig. 7), but it is obviously specified. Chagall’s
cello frequently exceeds the standard size, approaching bass-viol dimensions
in length of body, if narrower. The musician plays standing, not always
Fig. 15. A Violinist, 1939. Oil on
canvas, 100/73 cm. Private collection
Fig. 16. A Musician. Illustration for
the book My Life, 1922-1923. Paper,
etching, drypoint,
25/19 cm;
27.5/21.6 cm.
www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro
L. G. Safiullina, G. I. Batyrshina
80
pressing the strings with his fingers, pointing at the conventional, symbolic
character of representation of the instrument.
Fig. 17. Revolution, 1937. Oil on canvas, 50/100 cm. Private collection
In 1914-1915 Chagall created a number of works, depicting
mandolin-players, in which he embodies different stages and sides of the
processes of musical performance. One of his seven sisters, Liza, and his
only brother David act as his models. The portraits are created in an
expressionist manner, with typical distortion of the body’s natural
proportions and grotesque thinning of facial features. A portrait Liza with
Mandolin (fig. 18) depicts a girl only just learning to play the instrument. Her
mouth is slightly open from concentration; her head is bent to one side to
better see the fingerboard and the published notation beside her. The pupil’s
diligence and scrupulousness can be seen through her pose, although red
flaming aurora of the fading evening, falling on the windowsill and echoed
in the colour of the girl’s skirt, destroy the tranquillity of this idyllic picture
of home music-making. The apparent discrepancy between the sizes of her
hands demands the beholder’s attention, creating a feeling of physical
inadequacy: her rachitic right hand is almost twice as small as the left one, a
massive hand with inverted fingers. A disturbing impression is also left by
the face, depicted briefly, in general terms, with a twisted nose and
apparently empty eye pits (these are indeed lowered eyelids), resembling a
clown’s mask.
Chagall provides a quite different variant of musical performance in
the Portrait of Brother David with Mandolin, of a stately, seated young man with
a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth, confidently playing his instrument. The
act apparently gives him pleasure, takes him away to his recollections, as
www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro
Musical Images as a Reflection of the Artistic Universalism of Marc Chagall
81
evidenced by half-closed eyes and the smile wandering across his face ( fig.
19).
David was the painter’s younger brother, who lost his leg in the First
World War and died young, far away from his relatives. This picture, created
in nostalgic moderate blue tones, reflects
the painter’s grief. Chagall left the
following lines in his autobiography:
“Poor David! He sleeps in Crimea
among the aliens. He was so young and
he loved me so much - the sound of
his name is dearer for me than the
names of attractive far off countries, -
with him I feel the smell of native land.
My brother. I could do nothing.
Tuberculosis. Cypresses. You died away
in a strange land.... My memory is
burnt. I made your portrait, David. You
are smiling, your teeth are shining. A
mandolin is in your hands. Everything
is in blue tones.... My heart is with
you.”
27
His recollections of David held
Chagall fast and, many years on,
troubled with feelings of guilt and bitter loss:
27
Chagall 1994.
Fig. 18. Liza with Mandolin, 1914.
Oil on cardboard. Private collection
Fig. 19. Portrait of Brother David with
Mandolin, 1914. Cardboard, gouache,
49.5/37 cm. Primorsky State Gallery of
Vladivostok
www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html / www.cimec.ro
Dostları ilə paylaş: |