ARTSY
By Jonathan McAloon
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| Jew in Black and White, 1914
Oil on board mounted on canvas
39 4/5 × 31 9/10 in
101 × 81 cm |
For some, the modernist master Marc Chagall may epitomize kitsch, dreamy atmospherics: all those anthropomorphic lovers, improbable skies, and airborne musicians. But though Chagall’s work is undoubtedly about the play of imagination, desire, and love, the motifs that make his visual language so distinctive have their origins in something much more earthbound and richly complex. In his book Marc Chagall, writer Jonathan Wilson suggests that the recurring flying figures themselves are a pun on Chagall’s Jewish identity, and come from the literalization of a Yiddish word: “The word luftmensch, which denotes in Yiddish an individual overly involved in intellectual pursuits, literally means ‘man of the air,’” writes Wilson. [
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| White Crucifixion, 1938
Art Institute of Chicago |
