Politicians, religious leaders and scientific pioneers are truly important people, but a culture is nothing without its artists. In the study of many civilizations of antiquity, art is all we have left. How much would we know about ancient Egypt without the statues and the paintings preserved inside of the tombs of kings? How deep would our understanding be of the daily lives of the Sumerian people without the fragments of personal votives found in the ruins of a home? Artists document the soul of a people. Without them, our collective histories are nothing but a series of facts, like bones with neither flesh nor blood.
One of the greatest artists of the Jewish culture is Marc Chagall. His colorful, lively paintings depict the joyous spirit of our people using the strange geometry of Modernism that was otherwise so often dark and troubled. Chagall studied under many talented painters, sculptors and theatre professionals in his youth. He faced anti-semitism his whole life but never lost his passion and hope.
Marc Chagall (or Shagal) was born in the region that would one day be Belarus in the year 1887. He was the son of a herring merchant and the eldest of nine children. Chagall often reflected positively on his childhood in his work, depicting the impoverished shtetls of Eastern Europe as being the homes of loving, tight-knit people. Where literal drabness existed on the surface, Chagall painted wild colors and exuberant poses. What's more, he never hid his Jewish heritage in either his life or his work. If the painting was of a rabbi, the title would say so.
At the age of 20, Marc Chagall went to join an artists collective in St. Petersburg, Russia. Whether under the Czar or the Soviets, Russia was a difficult place for Jews. The cities required Jews to have special passes just to enter them and anti-semetic violence was common. Though he was already an esteemed artist and even the founder of the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art, Chagall faced dismissal and scrutiny from the new Communist regime for his Jewish heritage and for his approach to art.
At the time, Soviet Socialism had very strong opinions about what kind of art should be pursued in the new order. The Party favored Socialist Realism, a stern and inherently political variety of art that depicted the struggle of the people and the triumph of collectivism. The work of Marc Chagall tended more toward the passionate Modernism of the West and was thus deemed decadent and anti-Soviet.
Seeking a safer, more nurturing environment for his family and his art, Marc Chagall relocated with his wife Bella and their daughter Ida to Paris, France and eventually to America during the horrors of World War II. After the war, Marc moved around frequently, though he spent much of his time in France where he was a fixture in the art scene.
Like many Jews of his time, Marc Chagall had a troubled relationship with his heritage. Though Jewish themes remained throughout his work and he was even involved in the creation of the new culture of the State of Israel, Chagall was not a practicing Jew. It is said in many of his biographies that upon his death in 1985, Chagall's funeral would have been entirely secular had a stranger not decided to say the Mourner's Kaddish over his coffin.
Regardless of his personal beliefs, Marc Chagall remains one of the most prominent artists to ever come from a Jewish background. He achieved worldwide acclaim for his prolific contribution to Modernism and his work currently adorns museums and private collections across the globe. Perhaps we can take a lesson from Marc Chagall concerning what makes a Jewish artist. He was a fighter, a traveler, a man of family, of principles and of passion.