Chagall

One of the best-loved artists of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is paradoxically one of the least understood. Although his colourful images of flying cows and floating lovers may seem naive, and he promoted a view of himself as an intuitive genius, he was in fact a complex and sophisticated individual. In this book, Monica Bohm-Duchen places the artist firmly in his social, religious and cultural context, examining his prodigious output not only in painting but also in book illustration, theatre design, stained glass and poetry. She follows Chagall from his Russian-Jewish childhood, through his encounter with the Parisian avant-garde in the period prior to World War I and his activities in revolutionary Russia, to his later years in America and the South of France, where he died at the age of ninety-seven. The first survey of Chagall's work to take full advantage of new material available to the West since glasnost, the book encourages a critical reappraisal of all phases of the artist's long career.

Library Journal

Phaidon continues its "Art & Ideas" series with these two explorations of major artists. Both books firmly anchor the art in the life-context and experiences of the artist, thus allowing the reader to chart clearly his thematic and stylistic development. Belkin (an editor of The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, Northwestern Univ., 1991) sets the stage for a discussion of Rubens by explaining the political and religious divisions in the Netherlands and by examining his early family life. She traces Rubens's visit to Italy, where he immersed himself in the works of Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, and then follows him to Antwerp, where he was both a full-fledged painter and a diplomat in good stead with the major courts of Europe. She does a marvelous job of tracking the progression of Rubens's artistic, allegorical, and iconographic content. The author also posits Rubens as a disillusioned diplomat who saw and portrayed women as peace-bearers in an age of turmoil. Bohm-Duchen (Understanding Modern Art, EDC Pubs., 1991) uses the flow of information since glasnost to flesh out the social, religious, and cultural context of Chagall's development as an artist. Although he preferred to be known as an intuitive "tabula rasa," Chagall's Russian-Jewish upbringing; his travels to Paris, Berlin, Palestine, and the United States; and his witness to two world wars greatly affected his work. The historical background Bohm-Duchen gives here can lead toward a better understanding of Chagall's art, but her Chagall is not as fully revealed as Belkin's Rubens. His persona still floats, unmoored, like the Green Violinist against the stark white background of the book's front cover. Based on their price and scope, both books are recommended for public and academic libraries.--Nadine Dalton Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., OH