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拍品专文
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Chagall never forgot an incident going back to his years as a young man in the Belorussian town of Vitebsk, when he looked on as a father and his young children, members of an indigent family hoping to earn a few pennies for bread, performed on the street some clumsy but strenuous acrobatic stunts. The passing public deemed their efforts more pathetic than applaudable, and Chagall sadly watched as they afterwards walked away, unappreciated and empty-handed. Then, and at certain other times during his career, Chagall must have pondered that this might similarly become the fate of anyone who fancied for himself the life of an artist. "It seemed as if I had been the one bowing up there" (quoted in Le Cirque, trans. Patsy Southgate, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981, n.p.).
Chagall summoned the experience of circus performance, clowns, acrobats and young ladies riding bareback on horses, the ringside stands brimming with spectators, the total spectacle of the circus, in all its colorful variety, as a vivid metaphor for the life he decided to lead. The vision and dream of the circus came to lie at the very heart of his personal mythology.
An artist profoundly affected by nostalgia, haunted by memories of his homeland, and yet filled with love and joy for the world, Chagall turned increasingly to the circus as a theme. Indeed, it became one of his most favored motifs. Notwithstanding the irrepressible high spirits that everywhere burst forth in the present painting, and may always be savored in Chagall's treatment of this genre, the artist inwardly perceived a more serious side to this spectacle, a significant aspect of the circus dream that is equally present here if not so plainly expressed in paint, which may be best gleaned from thoughts that pervade the text Chagall wrote in his 1967 homage to the circus, "For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing. It is profound. These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves a home in my visions. Why? Why am I so touched by their make-up and their grimaces? With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up, I can dream of painting new psychic distortions. It is a magic word, circus, a timeless dancing game where tears and smiles, the play of arms and legs take the form of a great art" (in ibid.).
(fig. 1) Rolphe Zavatta and Léonor in the ring (in J. Prévert, Le cirque d’Izis, Monte Carlo, 1965, p. 91; illustrated by Marc Chagall).
Chagall never forgot an incident going back to his years as a young man in the Belorussian town of Vitebsk, when he looked on as a father and his young children, members of an indigent family hoping to earn a few pennies for bread, performed on the street some clumsy but strenuous acrobatic stunts. The passing public deemed their efforts more pathetic than applaudable, and Chagall sadly watched as they afterwards walked away, unappreciated and empty-handed. Then, and at certain other times during his career, Chagall must have pondered that this might similarly become the fate of anyone who fancied for himself the life of an artist. "It seemed as if I had been the one bowing up there" (quoted in Le Cirque, trans. Patsy Southgate, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981, n.p.).
Chagall summoned the experience of circus performance, clowns, acrobats and young ladies riding bareback on horses, the ringside stands brimming with spectators, the total spectacle of the circus, in all its colorful variety, as a vivid metaphor for the life he decided to lead. The vision and dream of the circus came to lie at the very heart of his personal mythology.
An artist profoundly affected by nostalgia, haunted by memories of his homeland, and yet filled with love and joy for the world, Chagall turned increasingly to the circus as a theme. Indeed, it became one of his most favored motifs. Notwithstanding the irrepressible high spirits that everywhere burst forth in the present painting, and may always be savored in Chagall's treatment of this genre, the artist inwardly perceived a more serious side to this spectacle, a significant aspect of the circus dream that is equally present here if not so plainly expressed in paint, which may be best gleaned from thoughts that pervade the text Chagall wrote in his 1967 homage to the circus, "For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing. It is profound. These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves a home in my visions. Why? Why am I so touched by their make-up and their grimaces? With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up, I can dream of painting new psychic distortions. It is a magic word, circus, a timeless dancing game where tears and smiles, the play of arms and legs take the form of a great art" (in ibid.).
(fig. 1) Rolphe Zavatta and Léonor in the ring (in J. Prévert, Le cirque d’Izis, Monte Carlo, 1965, p. 91; illustrated by Marc Chagall).