About the Author:
Jean-Michel Foray is director of the Musées Nationaux des Alpes-Maritimes, which include the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice. Meret Meyer Graber, Chagall's granddaughter, writes on and organizes exhibitions of the artist's work. Jakov Bruk is a research curator at the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow.
From Booklist:
Art lovers might think they know Chagall's work inside out, but a fresh look at this utterly original painter makes readers realize that perceptions of Chagall's achievements have narrowed and calcified over the years. In the first substantial monograph on Chagall in two decades, French museum director Foray awakens new appreciation for the aesthetic consequences of the artist's "fundamental ambivalance." A Russian Jew who depicted his hometown, Vitebsk, and rural Jewish life with great affection, he also evoked the aura of the country in which he lived in exile, France, and often painted Christian themes. Chagall was amphibian, too, in his approach to modernism, adopting a cubist style without abandoning his proclivity for old-fashioned allegory. Inspired by his fascination with the theater and the circus, Chagall suspended his acrobatic figures between earth and heaven, a reflection of his own quest for freedom from conformity, be it aesthetic, religious, national, or social. As this gorgeous volume's wealth of colorplates attests, every one of Chagall's surprising images and mystical juxtapositions is laden with meaning and spirit. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.