Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative

“Yale University’s Professor Benjamin Harshav is the preeminent Jewish culture critic today. His writings on Israel, the Holocaust, and the Hebrew and Yiddish languages are among the most illuminating, instructive, and inspiring in the genre that covers those disparate subjects. But he has outdone himself with this absolutely unique volume on painter Marc Chagall which runs more than a thousand pages. Although referred to as a biography, Harshav’s work is far more ambitious.”—The Jewish Tribune
“[Marc Chagall on Art and Culture and Marc Chagall and His Times] represent important contributions to the fields of art history, twentieth-century history, and Russian studies, and Marc Chagall and His Times in particular will, I suspect, be a standard work for those studying Chagall’s life for years to come.”—Canadian Journal of History/ Annales canadiennes of d’histoire

This book presents a new and comprehensive biography of one of the most prominent artists of the twentieth century in dialogue with the events and ideologies of his time. It encompasses the 98 years of Chagall’s life (1887-1985) in Russia, France, the US, as well as Germany and Israel, his deep roots in folk culture, his personal relationships and loves, his involvement with the art of the Russian Revolution, with Surrealism, Communism, Zionism, Yiddish literature and the state of Israel. The book exposes the complex relationships between Chagall’s three cultural identities: Jewish-Russian-French. Indeed, it is a biography of the turbulent times of the twentieth century and the transformations of a Jew in it, his meteoric rise from the “ghetto” of the Russian Pale of Settlement to the centers of modern culture.
The book reveals Chagall’s endless curiosity, his forays in many directions beyond painting and drawing: public art, theater and ballet, stained glass windows in churches and synagogues, lithographs, etchings, and illustrations of literature and the Bible. We observe the intricate relations between Chagall’s life and consciousness and the impact of his life on the iconography of his art. Thus, the book provides an indispensable key to the understanding of Chagall’s often enigmatic art. Indeed, it is a contribution to the understanding of some of the central problems of Modern art, such as the question of originality, the interaction between the formal discoveries of the avant-garde and cultural or multi-cultural representation, and the relations between an artist’s art and his personal biography.
RenownedIsraeli-American scholar Benjamin Harshav presents the first comprehensive investigation of Marc Chagall’s life and consciousness after the classic 1961 biography by Chagall’s son-in-law Franz Meyer. Harshav’s narrative includes hundreds of private letters and documents written by Chagall and his contemporaries in Russian, Yiddish, French, English and other languages, translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav into English, and placed in their personal and historical context.

Library Journal

Harshav (Hebrew & comparative literature, Yale) presents two volumes concerning the life and times of Russian painter Marc Chagall (1877-1985). Many of the books on Chagall focus, of course, on the art itself while offering a limited scope of the artist. Harshav's documentary texts will fill a void in the study of the artist and provide a comprehensive anchor for more all-encompassing research in the future, as Chagall's written legacy is mostly unknown. The more substantial volume, Marc Chagall and His Times, focuses on autobiographical writings, some correspondence, and a narrative outline of his life. Chagall had a zest for living, and the family photos, reproductions of lesser-known works, and other documents from his life dovetail with the turbulent times of the 20th century and illustrate the impact of life on art. Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, due out earlier but more appropriate as a companion to the later volume, covers public statements, lectures, essays, and interviews. The reader wrestles, along with Chagall, over matters of Jewish identity, the Russian Revolution, Surrealism, and communism. These two volumes would have worked better as one, or at least should have been published at the same time, as readers will typically need both. Marc Chagall on Art and Culture depends on information obtained from the documentary biography and may indeed confuse readers with limited background on the artist. However, the information presented in both will be invaluable to students, researchers, professionals, and aficionados alike, and both are recommended for libraries specializing in art history or Hebrew studies; just remember to purchase the second book in October!-Nadine Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Benjamin Harshav is Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Yale University. Among his many books are The Meaning of Yiddish (Stanford, 1990) Language in Time of Revolution (Stanford, 1993) and Marc Chagall on Art and Culture (Stanford, 2003).