Mysterious chimeras, half-man, half-beast, composite objects with human heads, and fantastic flying animals feature throughout Marc Chagall’s work. This is the first exhibition devoted to them.
Chagall certainly saw these hybrid creatures in the devils depicted in the icons and medieval sculptures he had admired so much in his native country. Goya’s Caprichos, whereman often takes the form of an ass, also attracted his attention. In general terms, hybridisation, evident throughout the history of art, caught Marc Chagall’s imagination.
In this respect, he follows in a tradition which encompasses works as famous as the Issenheim altarpiece and the paintings of Jérôme Bosch and Johann Füssli. Some of his contemporaries also fit into this same tradition. In fact, from Picasso to Brancusi, Hans Arp to Victor Brauner, winged quadrupeds, bird-women and other monsters, friendly or otherwise, have made an appearance in 20th century art.
Recurring hybrid figures feature in Chagall’s iconography: the human head is replaced by an animal head, beasts have human limbs which they use to play music or to paint, while cellos sprout arms and heads and play themselves.
What meaning can be attributed to these beings? As well as the symbolic or the metaphorical, there is the religious dimension, linked to the Hassidic traditions around Vitebsk, the artist’s home town. Finally, the ever-present domestic animals, cows, goats and chickens, highlight memories from a childhood spent in close contact with animals. His uncle, the butcher, sacrificed cows while whispering soothing words to them. The goat playing the violin evokes the magical village festivals animated by the music of the strolling fiddler. The fish recalls his father, who worked in a herring warehouse. And if the birds, too, play the violin or the shofar (ram’s horn trumpet), it’s because their song is like heavenly music.
