Rating: 3 out of 5

I found this a bit of a challenge to engage with. I wanted to find out more about Marc Chagall for a couple of reasons - firstly a friend had mentioned his style to me a year or so ago, and secondly because I’m seeing “The flying lovers of Vitebsk” as part of Brighton Festival and that is about Marc and Bella.

After being unsure how to approach this book - the pictures and the text don’t always completely align - I decided to read the words first, and look at the pictures when they were referenced in the text.

I then looked at the chronology at the back and looked at the referenced pictures again.

And finally I looked at all the pictures, and read the quotes in the side parts of the book.

My three favourite pictures in this book are, in the order they appear in the book, The Cattle Dealer, The Birthday, and Lovers in the Lilacs.

I find some of the work quite challenging and confusing with all the various layers of imagery. I find that I like art that I can rest in, that bring a sense of peace. Or art that tells a story. I saw Marc Chagal’s stained glass window at Chichester Cathedral on Thursday - a glorious, rich red - and the timing of experiencing that fits in well with the reading of this book. I’d be interested in seeing some more of his work in “the flesh” and to experience that in a different setting.

Highlighted passages:

“His work is arguably the most urgent appeal for tolerance and respect of all that is different that modern times could make”

“For Delaunay, and especially for Chagall, cubism represented an artistic language for the expression of the world’s magic, the secret life of things beyond mere functionality. It provided them with geometrical patterns, models for ordering dreams, experiences, desires and visions, ways of re-creting them in terms of a visual logic that could be grasped by others”

Originally posted to my Goodreads account