White Crucifixion, Marc Chagall, 1938 – Flashcards
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"Aryanization"
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Nazi program that affected many groups, including Romani, persons of color, ethnic Poles, the disabled, and homosexuals. It decimated European Jewry to an unparalleled degree. More than 11 million people were killed and 6 million were Jewish.
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Jewish Artist
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A group of people that were particularly targeted by the Nazis. There were also possibilities of humiliation and even death for these people.
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Jewish artists that died in the Holocaust
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Adolphe Feder (killed at Auschwitz, February 1943) Charlotte Salmon (killed at Auschwitz, October 10, 1943) Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita (Auschwitz, February 1944) Felix Nussbaum (Auschwitz, August 9, 1944) Peter Kien (Auschwitz, October 1944) Josef Capek (Bergen-Belsen, 1945)
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Jewish artists
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By surviving the Holocaust, these people's work was changed drastically by their experiences.
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Marc Chagall
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One of the most disguised Jewish artists, a regard largely founded on the work that he created in response to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Jewish experience of those terrible events.
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Marc Chagall
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Born Marc Zakharovich Chagall, he was born on July 7, 1887 in the city of Vitebsk in Russia. His family was Russian-French and Jewish.
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Pale Settlement
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The place that the Russian government had restricted Jewish residence to. This area includes present day Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. At Chagall's birth Vitebsk was here.
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Marc Chagall
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The eldest of nine children who was born into a relatively poor family. He wasn't allowed to go to a Russian school because he was Jewish. His mother successfully bribed that headmaster of a local Russian high school so he could attend.
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My Life (1922)
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Marc Chagall's autobiography
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Marc Chagall
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One of his fellow students drawing inspired him to become an artist. He began drawing and he decided that he wanted to become a doctor.
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Marc Chagall
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He began his formal training in the Vitebsk student of the realist artist Yehuda Pen (1885-1937). He didn't stay long because he realized he didn't want to do realism.
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Marc Chagall
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Moved to St. Petersburg in 1906, there he studied at Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting (attended from 1908-10). When he moved to Paris, he connected avant-garde artists associated with Cubism, including Fernand Leger and Robert Delaunay.
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Marc Chagall
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He enrolled at the Academie de La Palette and began painting in various artistic styles, including Fauvism, Cubism, and Symbolism, often depicting imagery from Jewish culture and his memories of Vitebsk.
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Marc Chagall
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He returned to Vitebsk with the intention of marrying of Bella Rosenfeld. The breakout of WWI changed his mind and he stayed Vitebsk and established himself as a avant-garde. He later married Rosenfeld in 1915 and they had a daughter, Ida in 1916.
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Marc Chagall
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With the advent of the 1917 Russian Revolution, he was given a prestigious in an art establishment. He declined and instead became the Commissar of Fine Arts for Vitebsk.
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Marc Chagall
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He opened the Vitebsk Arts College there during this period, hiring major artists like El Lissitzy and Kasimir Malevich.
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Marc Chagall
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When this person returned to Paris in 1922, he was commissioned by the dealer Ambroise Vollard to illustrate many books including Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, La Fontaine's Fables, and the Bible.
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Marc Chagall
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Ambroise Vollard later requested for this person to create a series of illustrating the Old Testament.
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Marc Chagall
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This person was inspired to travel to Palestine after he was commissioned to create some illustrations for the Old Testament.
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Marc Chagall
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At the outbreak of WWII, this person remained in France. He found that his artwork was being removed from all German museums after the Nazis came into power.
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The Germans or Nazis
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These people ended up occupying France and forced the Vichy government to pass anti-Semitic and to deport French Jews to the concentration camp.
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Marc Chagall
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The situation in German occupied France caused this person to realize that he needed to leave. With the help of Alfred Barr, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, his name was added to important European artists whose lives were threatened by Nazi and whom the Americans were urged to save.
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Marc Chagall
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In May of 1941 this person and his family was smuggled out of France using forged visa. They arrived in New York on June 23rd of that year.
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Marc Chagall
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After escaping to France this person interested in current events and he found that his old home Vitebsk had been destroyed. Along with this, his wife Belle died unexpectedly in 1944.
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Marc Chagall
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Bella death and the death of many Jews, had a profound effect on this person. The painting White Crucifixion was a result of these experiences.
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Marc Chagall
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Over his long career this person worked in almost medium, including painting, sculptures, printmaking, ceramics, mosaic, tapestry, stained glass, book illustrations, and stage sets.
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Marc Chagall
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Repainted the Paris Opera in 1964, the stained glass windows for the cathedral of Metz (1958-60), Reims (1974), and also The United Nations building in New York City (1964).
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Marc Chagall
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He is best known for vibrant color and for thematic focus on issues of Judaism, fantasy, and folk imagery. All these elements are beautifully displayed in 1938 painting White Crucifixion.
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White Crucifixion
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An example of Chagall's work that focused on Biblical narratives.
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The Biblical Message
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Seventeen large paintings dating from 1954-67 on the themes from Genesis, Exodus, and the Song of Songs. These works are now housed at the Musee Nationale Message Bibilique (also known as the Musee Marc Chagall) in Nice, France.
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Marc Chagall
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Along with The Biblical Message this person donated the earliest paintings he completed on the biblical theme to the museum en mass. These smaller works were designed for the illustrations commissioned by Ambroise Vollard.
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Marc Chagall
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"the Bible has fascinated me since childhood. have always thought of it as the greatest source of poetry of all times"
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White Crucifixion is described as ?
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"It was the first of an important series of compositions that feature the image of Christ as a Jewish martyr and dramatically call attention to the persecution and suffering of European Jews in the 1930s."
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White Crucifixion
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An oil painting on a canvas that was measured to be 60 7/8 x 55 1/6 inches. The center of the picture is the crucified image of Christ. He is positioned from the upper right to lower left. The diagonal line is emphasized by a broader shaft of white that suggests the light of God shining down on the scene. The painting is made of mostly grays and and whites. This is punctuated with bright colors at the periphery that indicate additional important elements of the scene. The overall design is confused and jumbled. Figures are deployed all over the canvas in various scales, and individual scenes are not positioned rationally in space throughout.
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Jewish identity in White Crucifixion
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The loincloth is replaced Jewish prayer shawl, recognizable by the its fringe, as well as the white color and two blue horizontal stripes. A Jewish head cloth replaced the crown of thorns. The mourners that surround Jesus are dressed in Jewish traditional costume.
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References to Contemporaneous Events in White Crucifixion
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Christ is flanked by on each side by images of pogroms- violent riots against Jewish communities. On the left a village is being attacked and burned by soldiers carrying a red flag. A group of refugees try to escape by boat, while three large male figures, dressed in blues and grays, retreat to the lower left of the image. The figure closest to Christ appears to look back up at the Crucifixion as he moves left, clutching a Torah in his arms.
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References to Contemporaneous Events in White Crucifixion 2
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A synagogue is in engulfed in flames. Objects strewn in front of the building suggest a scene of violet destruction. We see another fleeing male on the other side of the canvas. Dressed in green, he carries a sack on his shoulder as he moves to the lower right corner of the painting. Below him a mother holds her child up to her face, trying to comfort it in the midst of the chaos.
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How did Chagall protest with this art work
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By connecting Christ's death both to the Jewish faith and to contemporary events.
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Art Institute of Chicago
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"Chagall's painting passionately identifies the Nazis with Christ's tormentors and warns of the moral implications of their actions."
