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拍品专文
"If I were not a Jew, I wouldn't have been an artist," Chagall once proclaimed, "or I would have been a different artist altogether" (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 170). From his earliest work onward, Chagall featured subjects drawn from the Jewish culture and folklore in which he was raised in his native Russian town of Vitebsk. Decades after Vitebsk had been nearly totally destroyed in the Second World War, Chagall achieved international acclaim that established him as an important modern master and he became ever more absorbed in the legacy of his shtetl upbringing. During his later career, he created a series of tapestries and mosaics on Old Testament themes for the new Knesset building in Jerusalem and seventeen monumental Bible paintings for donation to the French State, which form the nucleus of the Musée national du message biblique in Nice.
"His late decades are moving for the energy of the survivor, the fidelity to his childhood and to the Jewish theme, the optimism and the protean ability to reinvent those themes," Jackie Wullschlager has written (Chagall: A Biography, New York, 2008, p. 508). This lyrical, poetic work, painted around 1980, depicts a rabbi before a townscape of modest, jostling houses, reminiscent of Vitebsk. Chagall remained deeply connected to his Russian and Jewish heritage throughout his life, often including motifs and references from his childhood in his art; “the soil that nourished the roots of my art was Vitebsk,” he wrote, “...my paintings are memories” (Chagall, quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ibid., p. 19). Vitebsk and all the impressions associated with it emerge continuously: the violinist or fiddler, a traditional Jewish symbol that Chagall vividly recalled from his childhood, often appears in different forms. "All our interior world is reality—and perhaps more so than our apparent world," he explained. "To call everything that appears illogical, 'fantasy,' fairy tale, or chimera would be practically to admit not understanding nature" (quoted in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Palo Alto, 2003, pp. 81-82).
"His late decades are moving for the energy of the survivor, the fidelity to his childhood and to the Jewish theme, the optimism and the protean ability to reinvent those themes," Jackie Wullschlager has written (Chagall: A Biography, New York, 2008, p. 508). This lyrical, poetic work, painted around 1980, depicts a rabbi before a townscape of modest, jostling houses, reminiscent of Vitebsk. Chagall remained deeply connected to his Russian and Jewish heritage throughout his life, often including motifs and references from his childhood in his art; “the soil that nourished the roots of my art was Vitebsk,” he wrote, “...my paintings are memories” (Chagall, quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ibid., p. 19). Vitebsk and all the impressions associated with it emerge continuously: the violinist or fiddler, a traditional Jewish symbol that Chagall vividly recalled from his childhood, often appears in different forms. "All our interior world is reality—and perhaps more so than our apparent world," he explained. "To call everything that appears illogical, 'fantasy,' fairy tale, or chimera would be practically to admit not understanding nature" (quoted in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Palo Alto, 2003, pp. 81-82).