“Solitude” Marc Chagall 1933, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Throughout his long career the Jewish artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) returns again and again to the motif of a Jewish man holding the scroll of the Torah. Usually the Torah is enclosed in a red cover and so there is a obvious suggestion that the man, Jew, or Rabbi is embracing the Law; holding it close to his heart. Also, the red cover suggests to me that it is in his blood and that it vital to who he is. Chagall was born into a poor family of Hasidic Jews near Vitebsk in Western Russia. The political upheavals of his time took him away from Vitebsk and kept him on the move until his late middle age. But Vitebsk is always there in his art as is his Jewish heritage. “Truly my pictures are my biography. I paint with the brush instead of with my mouth. In my paintings there is all the poverty of my childhood” (Chagall, 1978). Often his work has a dream like quality. His works are, if anything, compositions of his memories. And so Chagall suspends the law of gravity and lets people, animals, birds, flowers, lovers, Rabbis and whole villages float freely, as if in a dreamworld, each with a significance, sometimes far beneath the surface, sometimes not, yet intensely personal to the artist. Here the Jewish man sits on the ground wearing his prayer shawl and clutching the scroll of the Torah as a Bellini Madonna might hold her child. Again, the man has about him a quality of sadness – again like so many depictions of the Madonna and Child. In this painting there is a town in the background over which dark clouds gather. None of these elements are difficult interpret in the work of a Jewish artist painting in 1933. The man is seemingly oblivious to the white cow which almost kneels beside him. For us and for Chagall, no doubt, the two are united by the colour white. To my eye, this odd juxtaposition alludes to what were once the two ways for the the Jewish people to approach God: the Torah and the Temple sacrifice. Behind them, the dark clouds are broken by the light of heaven. There is a bright angel in flight, defying both the gravity and the darkness of this world. The heavenly creature in the sky is like the moon; its light falling on both man and beast. At the very centre between man and beast is an inexplicable violin; also a frequent motif in his paintings. Perhaps its meaning comes from his childhood in Vitebsk, a memory of joy or sadness once played out in the past. The circumstances of Chagall’s life meant that he was regularly on the move, needing to let go so much and yet in his art he seems to hold on to it certain things. This is why the motif of the Rabbi holding the Torah is at once so poignant and so powerful for any one who takes the time to engage with Chagall. For my part, there is in this painting a valuable lesson for life.
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