Since Christmas is approaching, I have chosen a mother and child portrayal to discuss, Maternity, by Marc Chagall.
Marc Chagall was born as Moishe Segal in a Russian village called Vitebsk in Belarus. His parents were poor Hasidic Jews and Chagall himself remained a devout Jew throughout his long life.
Since Jesus was born of Jewish parents, I think this work may be relevant and an interesting change from the madonna and child works to be found in the Christian tradition. Chagall was encouraged by his mother to follow his dream to become an artist. After becoming engaged to a local girl called Bella, he set off to live in Paris, which was the hub of artistic activity at that time, in 1914 he returned to his native village to marry Bella and found himself stuck there during WW1. I think it was in 1923 he returned with Bella to Paris, there he painted memories of his village, dreams and experiences, in which proportion and gravity played a very minor role. He created colourful patterns, where his interior world is just as real as everyday reality. In this lithograph, we see a picture full of nostalgia and joy, it is a loving scene of mother and child, set outside a pink house with an unknown man in the background, a strange purple and green tree and a donkey on which sits a bird, by coincidence donkeys are often portrayed in nativity scenes. He used bright, warm colours to express emotion and feeling. Chagall was a ‘one off ‘ artist, a painter-poet, a Slav expressionist, whose work was to influence many Surrealist artists, although Chagall would resist analysing his work. He gathered together colour, line, shape and texture and by doing this he brings about balance, ‘he brought back the forgotten dimension of metaphor into French formalism.’