Invitation to Art; 25; Marc Chagall

All his life, Mark Shagal, has made the impossible possible through his art. To submit ourselves to his art is to enter a world where logic is no longer a guide, for anything can happen. The world becomes transparent, figures rise and floats through the air as if it needed no more to do so than the thought of rising. Here in this picture, which he calls Birthday, the lover rises in an ecstasy of joy. His bride hurls the flowers, he's given her. And she herself, through the Russian lightness of her figure, is about to join him. This celebrates the birthday of his young wife whom he had returned to Russia from Paris to marry. Paris itself deeply influenced his art. His colour is lightened there and his art becomes more purely lyrical. He painted this in 1913 during his first day in Paris, Paris through the window. And here, truly, is forced on us, a willing suspension of unbelief, allowing us to share a vision which is full of the illogicalities of poetry. The man, his head as two faces,

as if it were expressing two minds, while above two little figures put their heads together and walk horizontally through the tongue. The cat curled up in the window, still has a human head. And again and again, the distinctions between human and animal life seem to be blurred there. He projects human emotions into animals and objects. Even objects can come alive. A fiddle can become a torso in which a man plays his own music. The cat seems to watch a figure descending through the sky beside the Eiffel Tower held up only by a cone of light. Those cones of light in the sky perhaps owe something to Cubism, the only movement which seems to have influenced his art. And what happens when we look at it is the annihilation of time and space, those two coordinates of logic, into poetry, which always substitutes its own logic. Everything in his pictures is altered by memory and imagination. Color no longer is any relation to natural color, and perspective that that handmade of logic

is bent to his own sweet will. You see, poetry replaces reality. The metaphor replaces the fact. For instance, if we say of a man, if we don't agree of his conclusions or with his conclusions, oh, he's got his head on upside down. Well, Shagal will paint him with his head on upside down. You see, the verbal figure of speech becomes the visual image. Now, one of his greatest pieces was eye in the village painted in 1911. And it's full of those delightful visual metaphors which seem to have their origin and memory and childhood. And here again, within the car's head is a girl milking a cow like an anecdote within a larger story. Now, it's just a position of incongruities and this freedom of fancy and association which makes him a forerunner of the surrealists. The essentials of his

art have changed very little through the years. His creativity has seemed inexhaustible and his joy as spontaneous and unconfined as ever. It's a warm and joyous art close to the very heart of poetry. I'd like you to meet Mark Shagal. Well, it is good to have you here in America once again. And we are so happy that you came back again after being with us through the war. Much of your art seems to be memories of childhood and how do these memories become transformed? Can you give me any idea into art? I can explain all the sorts of things to the extent of which one can have explanation to all in life in general. I am not fried nor am I quite Einstein. I'm just a man like

all of us, like all of you. I used to be a child. I seek justification. I used to speak of childhood, sure. When I see a child, I sometimes say, at the point of years, because I see in the child all sorts of natural things, in natural, spontaneous, fresh, better, as we go forward in the life. If we may sustain as a freshness of childhood, as naturalness, plus the development offered by age, I think life then is a little bit frustrating. Same with our work. It doesn't mean that we should fall into childhood or into adulthood. I'm against that. And I'm also against politivism. I'm against Ivetay and I'm against Arkeys. I'm full of freshness and naturalness. I'm just full of love, like the child. But we

should continue our lives to the end. It has no end for that matter. So it may have freshness and spontaneity just as our whole planetary system has. Perhaps I say complicated things, but they're really very simple. And they may even be naive. Now, when you speak of childhood, perhaps it is children who say that there is childhood reflected in you. I have not a child. Perhaps I'm rather unhappy with my complications and subtleties. Plunged in the water, I cannot like a child, extricate myself from that and this, from one moment to the next. Some say that it was them. I say in that case, that I have an unfortunate problem with child. Perhaps after having listened to me, you will be rather less enlightened

than before you listen to me. And in fact, in fact, it's so much better. It's much better this way. You should not think that after you have seen me trembling a little bit, smiling a little bit, as I am here. You are enlightened more than you were before about my art. But the country is the truth and that's the way it ought to be. You know, in a way, it is unfair to ask you for explanations because explanations, well, they always destroy things. They destroy poetry. And an explanation turns a poem into prose and what is lost is the poetry. So in a way, it is unfair. But it is good to talk to you in this way because what comes out to me from you is not explanations, but a sort of warmth, a love which to me is the most important thing in art. And I remember one great painter who said to me once that

the most important thing to do is to paint and to see paintings with affection. And I think this is very true for you. Yes, but you see, I've been painting quite a long time. I'm not going to tell you about the dates of my biography. Questions always arise in my mind. I don't ask them, but they arise. And some people find things not clear. They ask for explanations and I smile. And I say nothing sometimes. It is not always in working that clear answers emerge. And it is not always in talking that things are clarified that may or may not be an explanation. Personally, I avoid talking about my work, especially over the radio and television or giving explanations. Because it gives the impression if you

pardon me of my making propaganda or for my work. One should tire from the scene and leave one's work. What one has wrought with one's hands, I think. Yes, well, above all, I think you are a poet. You write like a poet. You are painting the full of poetry. And this is truly the great return. One of the few great returns and not or not to the imaginative truth to the truth of the imagination. So I have a feeling that perhaps some of your affections may go to poets rather than to painters. Are there any poets that you feel particularly close to? Well, may I interrupt you? I've not oriented towards poets especially. If you operate with colors, well, goodness gracious, they're

colors. It's a medium, a very difficult medium, like words for the poets, like sounds. So that's what you do. When you speak of poetry, poetry must be present everywhere, all over the place. What is poetry? The mystery of our existence, that's poetry. You cannot explain it in terms of two and two is four. When one operates with colors, when one paints, it's, when one paints it's color counts. Number one, number two, and number three, all the time. Poetry is inside, just as there is poetry in use, just as there is poetry in use. Poetry itself. Because frequently, of course, poetry is absent from verse. Poetry is everywhere, it's our verse. When I speak now, I breathe in its magic, and so do you, and so does everybody else. That's poetry. It's a mystery of our existence. This indeed

is poetry. As you will, must have a gift when you want. If you dab with color, see, if you dab with colors, as maybe seen from time to time, in these days, that's no poetry. It may, it's a matter of quality. Quality is poetry, too. That, in fact, is poetry. One cannot poetize, just as one cannot do, make music when one is in four musicians. One cannot do poetry by being a poetaster. So one cannot really explain what poetry is. Well, poetry in painting seems to tend very often, that is lyricism. The lyric gift seems to tend towards expression and color, and I think of Venetians, I think of George O'Neill, I think of Watteau and beautiful colors, I think of Gainesbury, even. And what artists

would you call, as you stand among the great chorus of European art, what artists would you call brothers that speak in color, at least, a little in the same voice? Well, one cannot exaggerate, one can't say the same voice as me. First of all, let me correct myself. For me, the greatest teacher, the greatest guide, if it may, if I may say so, in the plastic, musical, poetic field, was my parents, whom I saw as a similar, my father, my mother, who had poor workmen, where my first museum, my first Louvre, my first Hermitage,

since with them I found myself living next to the sky, next heavens and the stars. I had life in front of me, and I saw limpidly their faces, their calloused workers' hands. How does a child see that? I don't know, I forgot. But I felt that this was a world of color, their faces, their eyes, their hands, and the world of poetry, like a fountain was flowing from the top to bottom. Like all the boys I was excited also, by shoes and nude, etc. And then, when with the frail strength of my age I had to lead my native town, because I saw that unlike my father, I could not be a workman, because he was a workman to make a fool who were living, to nourish his children, I had to drink, to lift weights

like himself, and I looked for another way of making a living, and I left. And via Petersburg, Leningrad, then Petersburg, the Hermitage, I went to Paris, the Louvre, and I saw the artisans, paintings, art that resembled my father, my father's face, and my mother's face. I saw that, I saw that, I saw that, I am on set, I compared. If it resembled my father, it was truth. And this existence, this life, this physical feeling was there, I was looking for that in Paris, I was looking for it in Italy, I saw Mazzaccio, and I said, ah, there is something that resembles Mazzaccio, I saw Vato, in Paris, I said, ah, this is the love of my mother, or resembles, it resembles the love of my mother. It was a lot, I was telling my own nostalgia, this is the truth, there is chemistry, there is

color in it, of course. But for me, there was nostalgia, well, I'm not going to lecture, art, do you? But I saw all sorts of things that resembled my parents, and you see how the thing went around in circle. When I was a boy, I read the poets, I read Gogol, I read Gogol, and I read, with fear, and read, with fear, all that resembled my parents, but I came to Paris, I was looking for that. There were movements, impressionism, was finished, Cubism was beginning. I struggled with realism, among the impressionists, even the Cubists, there was realism which bothered me, I don't know why, I didn't want to make

more of those paintings. And I was thinking of some sort of anti-realism, even among Cubists, I saw realism changed into architectural patterns. So, if I left them in to some sort of or as Apollinaire said later into the supernatural while I didn't watch out, perhaps. And I didn't think that perhaps 20 years later they would come along, Sir Realism, which turned this into an ism into a school. Well, that I didn't particularly care about. Then there was Andrei Motto, and the others who proclaimed Automatism beyond the state means a system for Sir Realism well. So in Pottis you said in Pottis I was born again.

So I have some idea of what you mean. But perhaps you could say a little more about that statement in Pottis I was born again. Well, it's quite a big word and more like a big responsibility for a man. To say that, I've said that long ago in my life about my life. Now, when I left Vichyavuk, my native town, I felt that that would be forever. And this, in this field, came justified, I wrote, in 1922, now this town doesn't even exist at all.

Oh, it exists, but not the way in which I painted it, the way it used to be. So there's a new town there, really. I felt, therefore, the town of Vichyavuk was finished, the old town that resembled Vichyavuk was Paris, in terms of freedom, in terms of color, in terms of texture, and the kind of colors that I found about many such painters as Vato and others. The city of light was the only corner in the world which was parallel to similar to my native town. Now, remind you, I didn't have any right to live there, but just political. Not in terms of a future to make one see. There was no future at all. There was no future to say, not even to me. My fiancee or anything of that kind. Paris, the second was in the 14th or the 20th, I don't know.

There were some multiplicity of things there, not just for me, but for many other artists who used to come in the past and continue to come down from all countries. That applies to Picasso, that applies to Manillani, Greece. There was something about it. When you're in Paris, it washes away all of your native towns, wherever they may be. I have not become assimilated, please. If you please, I have not become neutralized either. This perhaps goes beyond the topic of our conversation. That's very kind of you. Well, what was the most important thing to you think that you got from Cubism with your meeting coming from Russia,

your meeting with this Western tradition, this very different art? What was the essential that you picked from it that you found helpful? And who was your favorite amongst them, Léger? It's a very interesting question. It's about time I started asking these questions of myself, by myself, but you know, I'm often like a child who never asks questions. How do I live? How do I live? What do I live? Sometimes I express the forget gratitude, which sometimes isn't very nice either. But above all, it is easy. There is a range of spectacles, especially as there was recently in Paris and I saw a pavilion. They see me as I was in Egypt because a little boy in 1989, they see a dark world, not that the colour, whether or not the colouring is dark,

but there is something dark or somewhat about it. As is the case with many artists, before they come to Paris, quite apart from the great ones like some Gug and others, they're colourful, they're taints of dark. How close perhaps, just a little bit? And when they come to Paris, suddenly it's a rainbow. Everything has changed, everything has transformed. Now, this is what I owed Paris. Since 1910, 1911, you will see some of these things in the modern museum in Chicago. There are transformations of skin, not of soul. The soul, too, however, is transformed when it is flooded with light. This is what I owe to France. What I saw was always a title to one's place, one's life. One owes to one's life, one's wife, two to everything.

When I come to America, I owe things to America. I owe things for being here. There are some things in America. In Mexico, for example, there's an exaltation colour. Which I didn't find in France. In France, under court, as you already remember, I found some sort of phosphorus defects, which I hadn't found at La Roche. One always owes something to somebody at some place. On the other hand, if I hadn't gotten it, they didn't go to Palestine, and the great publisher asked me to do the Bible. Before doing the Bible, I should have gone to Palestine. The same goes for Greece. Which I visited at the request of the area, the publisher.

There's something that will be lacking to me, in this world there, which I have not had in Paris, which I have not seen anywhere else. There is enrichment for each and every one of us in each place, each place has something to offer, in enriching one. There you are at my age. I can hardly say that Greece is VTX number three, or Mexico is VTX number four, or five, or X. That would make no sense. But we always all gratitude to persons, to countries, people. Because if one isn't hard as a piece of wood, or as a piece of iron, one always absorbs and receives something. Is that all right? You said a moment ago that one always owes something to somebody, and I think that your own art, from its very beginnings,

was different from anybody else's. And I was wondering who perhaps influenced you, or who helped you in that way. I think of a man named Singer, who was a writer, Isaac Singer, thought he writes from, is very much the same as what you paint from, in one way, in the folk stories, in the imagination, in the town, again, this pothiosis of the town, the old imagination, living through it and in it. So what origins, where does it come from? Well, you see my friends, I must disillusion you and dash your expectations. I don't know. They've said folklore, nationality, poetry. I don't know. I think it isn't true. What I do with my hands, look at it. Judge it, write whatever you want. You can write good or bad. If you write the bad things, perhaps I learned something.

You may be right. If you write good things, I may not believe it, because it may be too good. But I can't tell you anything else. It's impossible. Can you tell me about the artist's position? What do you think the artist's position should be in society? What do you think of this very much? You had to think of it in Russia when you went back. Well, of course, we've got our responsibility. One cannot escape responsibilities without responsibility. It should be. But the great responsibility. As in your case, for example, when you get married, you choose a wife whom you love. If you don't love, you get a divorce. That's life. You are born to love, to give love. And one must give 100% of one's own of one's life.

And if you do that away with all theories, love with a capital L, if that is not present, you start working with your head. It's no good. There are crises. It doesn't work. It isn't complete. It isn't painting. It isn't poetry. It is nothing. Read the great literary works. Start out with a Bible. Read the prophets. What was written? Was it written with a theory in mind, with calculations? Not at all. Other literary examples take Shakespeare. And others, later, there are no theories. So economics is played in the tale. You will have to make an effort to guess what I was trying to say, perhaps not clearly. But I apologize.

I can't tell it clearly. But what should say everything? What should cross all tees and not all eyes? That's my theory. There should be a bit of mystery. A bit of mystery is becoming. So... Say, I embrace and thank you, my friend. Thank you very much. This is NET, National Educational Television. NET, National Educational Television.

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