Bittersweet Memories On Display

It’s the perfect match – one of the largest synagogue buildings in the world hosting the works of one of Judaism’s most beloved artists.
A vibrant exhibit of Marc Chagall’s paintings and drawings entitled "Landscapes of Memory" is on display at the Jewish Museum and Archives in the Dohány Street Synagogue complex until the middle of October.
" Landscapes of Memory" covers a wide range of themes, from Old Testament prophets to scenes of war. It also combines the artist’s more well known colorful oil paintings with ink and pencil drawings.
Wistful and warm, tender and tragic, Chagall’s creations are much like Judaism itself. Traditions are celebrated with joy, but there is often an undercurrent of the pain of the ages.
During his long life (1887-1985), the Russian-born Chagall lived in New York, Germany and France. But while the artist left his small native city of Vitebsk behind, the images of his early years there became some of his most famous oil paintings.
The large 1910 painting "The Wedding" shows a demure bride escorted by grinning townspeople and musicians. Her white gown makes her the focal point in a primary-colored landscape.
Also rich in warmth is the lovely 1977 work "The Family," in which a rapt-faced woman in a Russian village holds her child. With typically dream-like touches, Chagall includes people in shades of blue and gray watching kindly over the woman as if to remind her that she is part of a wealth of tradition.
In the Magrittesque 1949 work "Wall Clock with Blue Wing," a clock floats above a village in a black sky, with the barest outline of a man with a pack on his back below. The tender "Bella and Ida at the Window" (1916) depicts Chagall’s wife and young daughter. But Chagall’s work is perhaps most arresting when it is bittersweet.
In "Cemetery Gates," (1917) Jewish graves stand as silent testament to the pogroms of the past. But rather than using darkness, Chagall has surrounded these icons of death with cheerful greens and yellows and blues, which surround the cemetery in a bright jumble of geometric angles. As museum director Róbert B. Turán writes in the exhibit’s catalogue, "Chagall’s bravery is painted poetry, his accentuation of the Hassidic principle of joy in a poetic form in his painting.”

“The large 1910 painting "The Wedding" shows a demure bride escorted by grinning townspeople and musicians” – Chagall’s technical

In a section of Biblical oil paintings, the golden "Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law" (1955-1960) mingles with the ethereal "Rachel’s Tomb" (1966). In "The Prophet Jeremiah," (1968) the prophet’s features reveal age’s wisdom and gentleness skills shine in the section of drawings, as he takes advantage of the medium’s delicacy to show tiny details.
In his 1931 piece, "The Funeral," for example, his pen notes the grieving faces in the procession of mourners, the wheels on the horse-drawn hearse, and the whip in the driver’s hand.
And in 1943’s "War," strong spots of ink become the chaos of fighting, while more careful strokes show a bereaved mother’s hand over her face.
Along with the Jewish Museum, the exhibit is presented by the Budapest French Institute.

The First Steps
In his 1931 autobiography entitled “Ma vie,” a career-starter, Marc Chagall compiles the following reasons for becoming an artist:
Here is what happened to me in a junior high school art class. A classmate ... showed me a drawing he had made on a sheet of tissue paper, a picture of a smoker taken from a copy of Niwa. ... My memory is a bit foggy, but I recall being enraged that such a picture could be done by the hand of this simpleton and not my own. A sudden, violent impulse took hold of me. I ran to the library, found a copy of Niwa and began copying a portrait of Anton Rubenstein, the composer, captivated by his wrinkled face. ... I might have also done some drawings from my imagination. I collected my work, took it home, and hung it on the walls in my bedroom. I was familiar with common, unpretentious words and phrases. But a fantastic, literary, otherworldly term like "artist," if I had heard it before at all, it would not have been in my hometown. It was so removed from us! On my own, I would never have found the audacity to utter the word. One day, a schoolmate came to visit and, seeing the drawings in my bedroom, exclaimed. "Say, you're a real artist, aren't you?" "An artist, what's that?" I asked. "Who's an artist? Could it be that . . . I mean, am I . . .?" He left without saying any more on the matter. Once he was gone, I remembered having seen a large sign in town, like the ones one sees hanging in front of boutiques, that read "Penne's School of Painting and Drawing." I thought, "This is my destiny. All I have to do now is register in this school and become an artist."
And so ended forever my mother's dream of seeing her son become a clerk, an accountant, or, at best, a well-established photographer.