Hung Liu received her second National Endowment of the Art fellowship in 1991. She and her son became American citizens in 1991. Also in 1991, she made her first visit back to China on a faculty grant from Mills College. Hung Liu asked her mother, who had returned to China, to look for any old photographs for her research project: “Most families burned their photographs, especially ones of Western-style weddings or anything that indicated you were not a proletariat or had some money. I went to libraries and found some magazines. I came out with all the dust all over my face. Nobody had touched these things forever.” 

Hung Liu discovered books of photographs of high-class prostitutes from the late 19th Century until 1911 in an old Beijing film studio: “The women were doing the most hilarious things, like holding a book in hand, even though women were not allowed to learn to read and write, or driving a car, an old Ford model. The purpose was to sell themselves, pretend they were upper class. [The photos] were shocking and exotic but also familiar.” The books were a catalog used by high-ranking and wealthy men.

Hung Liu drew from her collection of prostitute photographs to create “Chinese Profile II” (1998) (80”x80’’). Profile portraits were used historically in ethnographic or anthropological studies of facial and racial prototypes. In the 21st Century women’s movements, these profiles were recognized as an attempt to avoid the “male gaze.”  Her collection of black and white photographs was an opportunity to present these figures with the dignity they deserve. “Chinese Profile II” is large in scale and rich in color. She describes the process: “Between dissolving and preserving is the rich middle ground where the meaning of an image is found.  I release information from the photo.” 

“September 2001” (2001)

“September 2001” (2001) (66’’x66’’) was completed after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by al Qaeda. The image of a Chinese Bride in full dress is fused with the image of a 10th Century Song dynasty ink painting of a duck. The young bride wears a traditional, richly embroidered red dress and a phoenix coronet. Phoenix coronets are made from kingfisher feathers, a traditional sign of status and wealth. They are made of silver and contain precious stones and pearls. Hung Liu interpreted the expression on the young bride’s face as reflecting “a moment of uncertainly, a feeling of being on the brink” which she saw as the collective emotional response to 9/11.

Fused with the bride’s face and coronet are the wings and head of a wild duck that flies through her face like the planes flew through the Trade Center and Pentagon. The effect is an explosion.  Mandarin duck is served at wedding ceremonies because the birds are considered extremely faithful, a symbol of love, devotion, affection, and fidelity.  For this reason, images of ducks are carved, made in porcelain, and cast in bronze for houses and temples. The duck heads look up, but Hung Liu deliberately positions the duck head bowed because “the bride symbolizes people involuntarily wed to an unexpected relationship, a new era in our political consciousness.”  

“Strange Fruit” (2002)

The title, “Strange Fruit” (2002) (80’’x160’’) was inspired by the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit (1939) that called attention to the numerous lynchings in the American South. The painting also is known as “Comfort Women,” because they were Korean prisoners of war who were forced to serve Japanese soldiers during World War II. Hung Liu used the red paint in the background to obscure the Japanese soldiers that were visible in the original photograph. She incorporates the images of two butterflies, symbol of love. White butterflies carry souls to heaven, while black butterflies represent transformation and hope after dark times. Although neither of the butterflies is entirely white or black, any butterfly is considered good luck in China as both words butterfly and good luck sound similar when spoken.

Hung Liu began to incorporate circles in paintings at this time. In Chinese writing, a circle is used rather than a period to end a sentence. In Zen Buddhism, circles represent both wholeness and emptiness, and the cycle of life. Hung Liu completes each circle in a single brush stroke. She refers to them as “a kind of Buddhist abstraction.”

Untitled” (Seven Poses) (2005)

Hung Liu’s Seven Poses (2005) is a series of “Untitled” paintings (60”x60”) of 19th Century courtesans who provided entertainment in the form of music, poetry, and song to entertain dignitaries. Each of the paintings depicts one or two courtesans with pieces of ancient pottery, and each contains symbolic animals such as grasshoppers, sparrows, swans, and cows. All the women are posed seated since they have undergone foot-binding. In “Untitled” Hung Liu has created a painting that employs the color orange. In China, orange is associated with the harvest and represents happiness and wealth. It is a popular color used in celebrations. Oranges and tangerines are a primary food for Chinese New Year. The cow is symbolic of agriculture and nurturing; it is a gentle animal. The friendly cow licks the leg of one of the women. 

Hung Liu’s signature drips and circles are present, as are Chinese characters and chop marks. In each of the seven poses, an ancient Chinese artifact is prominent in order to reinforce the historical nature of the image. Flowers are also placed in many of Hung Liu’s paintings since they too have significant symbolic meaning for Chinese people. The white flowers in this painting are magnolias, one of the most expensive flowers in China. They were considered so precious that only the emperor could own and grow them. They also were valued for their many medicinal properties. Hung Liu states, “I communicate with the characters in my paintings, prostitutes—these completely subjugated people—with reverence, sympathy, and awe.”

“Going Away, Coming Home” (2006) (10’ tall by 160’ long) can be found on the glass window of Terminal 2 at the International Airport in Oakland, California. Hung Liu painted eighty red-crowned cranes, the second rarest crane species, on the huge glass wall with enamel paint. Red brings good luck, is the color of joy, and protects against evil. The silk scroll “Auspicious Cranes” (12th Century), painted by Emperor Huizong, was hung over the roof of his palace to bring peace and prosperity to his home. From that time, cranes have been a symbol of peace, purity, wisdom, fidelity, prosperity, and longevity.         

Hung Liu has placed twenty cranes on each of the four windows of the terminal, bringing the number to 80 cranes to give blessings to travelers. A second layer of glass contains images of satellite photograph close-ups of the Bay Area and the Northern California coast toward the Asian Pacific region. Departing passengers walk past an expanding image and returning passengers see the view being reduced back to the Bay Area. Hung Liu’s circles represent the endless and wholeness of the universe.

Next week, part 3 of the article on Hung Liu will continue her journey to bring understanding and information to the public through other themes in her impressive and expansive body of work.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China, in 1948. Her father was an officer in the army of Chiang K’ai-Shek. When Mao Zedong and the communist party took over on October 1, 1949, Hung Liu’s father was sent to prison, and her mother was forced to divorce him to save her new born daughter. Hung Liu went to live with her grandfather. She began drawing by age five: “One beautiful day in the late spring of 1954, I went outside with my grandpa, who was a middle school biology teacher. We both loved the outdoors–the wild flowers, the bugs, the birds, and everything we could see in nature. I brought my sketchbook with me as always. I was six years old, and that was the first time I tried to draw trees–there were a lot of them. I had a hard time doing it. Finally, I showed my finished drawing to grandpa–I was quite frustrated with the representation of the trees. Grandpa was like one of my teachers at school–he looked at my drawing, took a moment to meditate, then wrote down my grade–95. I guess he didn’t like the way I drew the trees. As I was just about to take my sketchbook and walk home, grandpa crossed out the 95 and put down 100!  I was surprised and speechless.” (Hung Liu, 2010)

“My Secret Freedom” (1968-1972)

In 1968 Hung Liu was sent to Da Dulianghe re-education camp where she worked as a farmer for four years.  She managed to make small drawings which she named “My Secret Freedom” (1968-1972). She also took photographs with a hidden camera of the peasants and gave them to them as gifts. Most families had destroyed their photographs to protect themselves.

After her release from the camp, Hung Liu attended the Beijing Teachers College as an art and education major. She received her BFA in 1975 and her MFA from the Central Academy of Fine Art in 1981. From 1981 until 1984 she taught at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Hung Liu was allowed to go to the United States to study art in 1984. She received an MFA (1986) in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. She was taught only Russian realist art in her MFA program in China.

One of Hung Liu’s early works in America was “Resident Alien” (1988) (5’x7.5’), a large painting of her Green Card with her name as FORTUNE COOKIE, and the date of her birth1984, considering 1984 as the date of her rebirth. Hung Liu views fortune cookies as a symbol of her hybrid status: she was neither American nor Chinese, a multicultural condition. A rule-breaker, as she was in China, Liu made the words RESIDENT ALIEN large as a criticism of her status as an immigrant in the promised land. 

“Virgin-Vessel” (1990)

     Hung Liu began to teach Chinese History in1987 at the University of Texas, continuing as Assistant Professor of Art from1988 until 1990. From 1990 until she retired in 2014, she was a professor of art at Mills College in Oakland, California. Among her first works in America were paintings that criticized conditions in China. “Virgin-Vessels” (1990) (72”x48”) depicts a young Chinese girl, with a perturbed look on her face, sitting in front of mirror. Her age and her white clothing reinforce the title of the work. Her feet, which project forward, are twisted and deformed. She is a victim of Chinese foot-binding, where the toes and arch are broken and bound to the sole of the foot. Women are then unable to walk. Girls were told that it made them more marriageable, as men liked small feet. However, most of the girls were forced to sit still, and were put to work making yarn, cloth, mats, shoes, and fish nets. The practice was more an economic necessity than a way to a better marriage.

Hung Liu has placed a red square on the white costume of the girl. The color of red has been for centuries a symbol in China of the sun, fire, and the heart. It represents power, celebration, prosperity, and it is said to repel evil. It also represents fertility. Quotations from Chairman Mao is alternatively titled the Little Red Book.  In the center of the red square, Hung Liu has painted a white Chinese vase/vessel. On it she has painted in the traditional Chinese style a couple on a rug having sex. 

“Jiu Jin Shan” (1994) is an installation commissioned by the De Young Museum in San Francisco. It was part of a larger exhibition titled The Other Side: Chinese and Mexican Immigration to America.  Jiu Jin Shan is what the Chinese call San Francisco; the English translation is Old Gold Mountain. The mountain and the roadbed are formed from 200,000 fortune cookies; the railroad tracks crisscrossing the floor are taken from the Sierra Nevada section of the transcontinental railroad. Liu painted several Chinese sampans, sailing ships, on blue walls of the gallery. The ships around the room are smaller, as if they are coming from far away. When Europeans first saw Chinese ships, they called then junks. 

“Three Fujins” (1995)

“Three Fujins” (1995) (96”x126”x12’’) was influenced by a photograph taken in the 1880’s during the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty in China. The  Fujins were concubines of the royal court. In full make-up, they are dressed in court finery with flowered headdresses. They sit rigidly, with little expression, as they pose for the camera. Hung Liu’s use of oil paint thinned with linseed oil is allowed to run in long drips of color over the painted surface. The painting is an early example of this technique, which became her signature style. 

The three black wire bird cages are real, not painted. They hang from the front of the canvas and represent the caged life of the fujins who would remain trapped like birds for their entire lives.

“Rice Sweeper” (2000) (80’’x80’’) represents Hung Liu’s fully developed style. The subject is an elderly Chinese person who uses a bundle of straw to sweep up the grains of rice that have fallen by the wayside. It speaks of the hardships experienced by the common people in China during the wars and revolutions. Other Hung Liu’s paintings have a similar theme, depicting hungry children eating the small amount of rice to be had, a woman working a hand loom, and women pushing the wheel of a millstone. Hung Liu uses linseed oil to thin the paint so that it runs down the canvas, which creates a unique atmosphere.   

Hung Liu places a mother hen and her two chicks at the lower left corner of “Rice Sweeper.”  Chickens were domesticated in China by 6000 BCE. They are considered benevolent and faithful. Roosters represent the Sun as they crow every morning at sunrise.  Balancing the composition, six small images of the Buddha are placed at the top right corner. They are seated cross-legged in the lotus position for meditation.

Four sparrows sit on the branch of a fruit tree above the rice sweeper’s head. A fifth sparrow sits on the old man’s shoulder. In China, the sparrow is an auspicious sign of happiness and the coming of spring. Hung Liu includes these symbolic references to abundance and happiness as a sign of hope in the struggle of the common people to survive.

The Chinese communist government pursued the “Four Pest” campaign from1958 until1962 to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Sparrows ate grain, seeds, and fruit, and the campaign was intended to increase crop yield. When it became obvious the rice crops were diminishing because the sparrows were not there to eat the huge number of insects, including locusts that attacked the rice, Mao Zedong ordered an end to the sparrow killing. He redirected efforts to the elimination of bedbugs.

Hung Liu explores many themes in her art, bringing her work world-wide attention. Part II on Hung Liu will touch another of her themes.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Adelaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) was one of the eight children of Claude Edme Labille and Marie-Anne Saint-Martin. Her father owned a haberdashery shop near the Louvre in a popular section of Paris with theaters, music halls, and dance halls. It was home to many artists, since the Royal Academy was housed in the Louvre. Labille-Guiard was able to spend time in the studio of Francois Elie Vincent, a miniaturist, and she also studied pastel with Maurice Quentin de la Tour. She entered the Academy of Saint Luke in 1769.  She married Louis Nicholas Guiard, a financial clerk, that same year. The marriage contract stated that she was a professional painter at the Academy of Saint Luke. They separated in 1774; there were no children. When Napoleon came to power, they were able to divorce legally. Although she continued to use the name Guiard, she married Francois Vincent, a history painter, in 1800.

“Self-Portrait with Two Students” (1785)

Labille-Guiard’s pastel portraits achieved great success when she exhibited at the Academy of Saint Luke.  An exhibition in1877 was so successful that the Royal Academy, with the backing of the King, abolished the Academy of Saint Luke. The ambitious Labille-Guiard was undaunted. By 1783, her pastels had earned her an appointment to the Royal Academy. It had limited membership of women to four. Labille-Guiard was an advocate for women artists. Her “Self-Portrait with Two Students” (1785) (6’11’’ x 5’) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) had several purposes. Exemplary of her classical technique, it included two of her female students, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761-1818) and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond (d. 1785). Both students would become fine artists, although they could not become Academy members or show their work in Academy exhibitions. Labille-Guiard was determined to get them in the exhibition, one way or another.

She depicted herself in the process of teaching her students, who pay her rapt attention. She shows off her wealth, dressing in an extravagant light blue and white silk gown, with a very low neck-line. She wears a very large straw hat with a large blue bow and lots of feathers. Her father’s haberdashery skills are on full display. The toe of her elegant silver slipper rests on the easel. Clearly, she dressed herself in an outfit she would never wear when painting. In contrast, her students are simply dressed. Her well-appointed studio has a carpet on the parquet wooden floor. A gilded and carved wooden stool with a red velvet cushion holds additional paint brushes. Behind her is a classical portrait bust, and beyond that a statue of a Vestal Virgin. Specially selected Roman women who remained chaste and kept the sacred fires burning in the temple of Vesta received special rights and privileges.

“Madame Adelaide” (1787)

Princess Marie Adelaide, daughter of Louis XV and eldest aunt of Louis XVI, saw great talent in the work of Labille-Guiard. She was responsible for hiring Labille-Guiard to paint portraits of the Madames of France, women of the court who were relatives of the King.  Labille-Guiard was awarded a pension of 1000 livres. The subject of  “Madame Adelaide” (1787) (106” x76.3’’) (Versailles) is dressed in a flowing, burnt orange velvet coat decorated with heavy gold embroidery. It is worn over a silver and gold brocade gown with lace sleeves and jabot. Her hair adornment of ribbons and lace is not a hat, but may be another Labille-Guiard creation.

Madame Adelaide stands next to an elegant easel on which the cameo portrait of her dead parents and brother are painted. A black velvet curtain has been pulled back to display the work. The towel and pen in her hands may indicate Madame Adelaide has just signed the work. She looks out at viewers as if to get their approval. The marble inlaid floor, the gilded stool with a green velvet and gold fringed cushion, and the gold chair with the green cushioned back set the scene in a palace. On the wall behind her are four tall marble columns with Corinthian capitals. Between the columns is a carved stone relief depicting persons mourning at the side of a death bed. Barely visible between the two columns, a sculptured female figure stands upon a pedestal and holds a burning torch. 

‘’Madame Louisa Elisabeth of France and Son’’ (1788)

  “Madame Louisa Elisabeth of France and Son” (1788) (108’’ x63’’) (Versailles) is a posthumous portrait, the subject died of small pox at the age of 32. Her young son Ferdinand holds her hand and looks up at her. Louisa Elisabeth, relaxes against the rail of a porch and looks pensively at the viewer. She wears an elaborate black dress with gold trim, decorative red slashes on the sleeves, and stiff white lace.  The bodice is very low cut, not usual in women’s portraits of the time. The red velvet curtain hanging from the roof of the porch, the red velvet on the railing, the red in her hat, and the tiny red point of her shoe tie the composition together. Her unusually well feathered hat is another Labille-Guiard creation. The sun shining across the painting from left to right creates shadows. Her silhouette, particularly her feather hat, appears on the wall behind her. The sun shines fully on the three short pillars of the balustrade, her son’s blond hair, and the hand her son holds. The sun does not shine upon the upper part of her face. The inclusion of the parrot on the balcony railing is an interesting choice. Parrots carry on conversations as they repeat words they have heard and therefore are considered messengers from God.

“Marquise de Lafayette” (1790-91)

Labille-Guiard wanted to move toward painting history subjects. She was commissioned to paint the King’s brother in a large history painting. During the French Revolution of 1789, much of the art that depicted royalty was destroyed.  The portraits of the Madames of France and a major painting of Marie Antoinette that had been taken to Versailles were spared.

The “Marquise de Lafayette” (1790) (30.75’’ x 24.75’’) (National Museum of Women in the Artist) is presumed to be a portrait of the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette, well-known in France for his help to America in the American Revolution. The Marquise is dressed in a simple purple dress with little adornment and no jewelry except for earrings. She is placed in front of an ambiguous landscape, not a royal palace or park. Her attire is within the more subdued and simplistic limits of the early years of the French Revolution.  

Labille-Guiard supported the French Revolution, and she found patrons among members of the National Assembly (1789-1791) including Robespierre and Talleyrand. She also was commissioned to paint some history paintings.  She proposed on September 23, 1790, that an unlimited number of women be admitted to the Royal Academy and allowed to serve on the governing board. Both motions were approved, but short lived. 

Labille-Guiard finally was allotted lodgings in the Louvre in 1795, and was given a new pension of 2000 livres per year. She was the first woman artist to have a studio in the Louvre. Her earlier requests were rejected because of her students were women. The Comte d’Angiviller had advised the King that “all the artists have their lodgings in the Louvre, and as one only gets to all these lodgings through corridors that are often dark, this mixing of young artists of different sexes would be very inconvenient for morals and for the decency of Your Majesty’s palace.”

“Atelier of Madame Vincent” (1808)

Labille-Guiard was able to divorce her estranged husband and marry Francois Vincent in 1800. She, her husband, and student Marie Gabrielle Capet moved to a house outside Paris in the town of Pontault-en-Brie. Labille-Guiard and Vincent adopted Capet so she would be able to inherit their estate.  Unfortunately, Labille-Guiard became ill and died in 1803 at the age of 54. Her student Capet stayed on to look after Francois Vincent, who died in 1816. “Atelier of Madame Vincent” (1808) (27” x32.8”) was painted by Capet as a tribute to her teacher Labille-Guiard (Mrs. Vincent). Labille-Guiard, dressed in a simple white gown, paints a portrait of the esteemed French painter Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809). Capet sits to her left and looks out at viewers as if to verify they are paying attention. She prepares paint for Madame Vincent.  In the black jacket just behind Madame Vincent, her husband points at something in his wife’s painting. 

The room is full of watchers. Labille-Guiard and other women painters were often accused of taking credit for works painted by men. Therefore, onlookers were not unusual in the studio of a woman artist. Accusations and rumors of rivalry between women artists and flirtations with male sitters were common, but not true. Male artists’ prejudice against women artists who might steal their clients was rampant. 

Labille-Guiard was considered one of the best teachers of her time, and one of the great pastel portraitists. Her reputation suffered after her death, not because she was not a great artist, but because she was a woman artist. Her works and her reputation have been researched and restored by writers in the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), a Jew born in Vitebsk, Russia, would become a renowned artist. His father was a herring merchant, and his mother sold groceries from their home to support their nine children. Chagall’s memories of his childhood under the Pale of Settlement, the pogroms established in Russian to greatly restrict Jews, his Hasidic Jewish upbringing, and memories of his beloved home town Vitebsk were the strongest influences on his art. As a Jew he was not allowed to attend school, except Yeshiva (Jewish school), but he was highly intelligent. His mother enrolled him in a regular high school when he was 13. He recalled his mother’s actions: “In that school, they don’t take Jews. Without a moment’s hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor. She offered the headmaster 50 rubles to let me attend, which he accepted.” 

At school, Chagall watched a fellow student draw. In his autobiography My Life (pub. 1923), he described it as “like a vision, a revelation in black and white.” Never having seen art before, Chagall knew what he was meant to do. He moved to St Petersburg in 1906 to attend art school.  He studied under Leon Bakst, a Russian Jewish artist who would become famous as a designer of sets and costumes for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe. Bakst also introduced Chagall to the theater. Chagall remained in Russia from 1906 until 1910. He was able to move to Paris in 1910, when a member of the Russian Duma who liked him and his art, gave him a monthly stipend of 40 rubles to support his art.

“I and the Village” (1911)

Chagall saw the art of Picasso and Matisse and the other young artists of Cubism and Fauvism, and the various other “isms” then in Paris. He began to realized that Jewish traditions so much a part of his life were in decline and that he needed to document them. “I and the Village” (1911) (75”x 60’’) (MoMA) is one of his earliest paintings in Paris. Vitebsk, a busy crossroads for trade, had both churches and synagogues and a large Jewish population. Influenced by the vibrant colors of Fauvism, and the geometry of Cubism, Chagall created a dream-memory of his hometown.

Looking eye-to-eye at each other are the green face of a Jew, Chagall, and the large multicolored head of a lamb. They recognize each other and smile slightly.  They are joined compositionally by a large multicolored, overlaid circle, symbol of inclusion and wholeness. Connecting the man and the lamb is a triangle formed by a hand holding a flower. The triangle extends from the center bottom of the composition to the lamb’s mouth. Enclosed in the lamb’s head is the image of a woman milking a white cow. Scenes of Vitebsk that include farm animals such as cows, sheep, chickens, and roosters are common images drawn from Chagall’s childhood memories.

Floating between the foreheads of the two main figures, are a farmer carrying a scythe and a woman dancing upside-down. Behind them arranged on a circular ground is the colorful town of Vitebsk, including a Russian Orthodox church, its dome bearing a cross, and five brightly colored houses, two of which are upside down. People and objects float in the air devoid of gravity, and existing upside-down, become another characteristic of Chagall’s art. The painting is carefully composed using primary and secondary colors and overlapping geometric shapes. Chagall created a space based in reality, but a world beyond. “I and the Village” combines Chagall’s memory, dreams, and fantasies that are so much a part of his art. 

Why Chagall depicted himself as green is a question. The cultural identify of Jews was a major issue in Chagall’s time. He wrote, “Back there (Russia), still a boy, at every step I felt—or rather people made me feel!…that I was a Jew.” Throughout his life, Chagall had to deal with the perception that Jews were less than human. He frequently used green for himself and fellow Jews because to him the color green symbolized rebirth and joy. 

“The Fiddler” (1912-13)

  Chagall loved Paris, but in his early years there he struggled to learn the language and to earn money. “The Fiddler” (1912-13) (74”x 62’’) was painted on a brown checkered tablecloth. He leaves portions of the tablecloth unpainted on the fiddler’s shoes, pants, coat and in the brown of the houses and churches. Music and dance were an important part of the Hasidic tradition, seen as a way to commune with God. Fiddlers played throughout a person’s life, from birth, to marriage, and at death.

Chagall’s fiddler stands on one leg on the roof of a house, while his other leg kicks out into space as he dances. At his left, dressed in native costumes, three small figures dance to the music. A blue tree at the right shelters white and yellow birds. A figure in yellow floats in the clouds above the fiddler. Chagall cleverly played white triangles against the partially black earth and sky. Despite the heavy black areas that surround the fiddler, or perhaps because of them, the painting is a haunting reminder of life and death.

“Paris, no word sounded sweeter to me!” Chagall reveled in his new life: “No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris.” Paris proved to be one of the major turning points in Chagall’s life, although he remained homesick for Vitebsk. After his initial adjustment period, he became a welcomed member of the Paris avant-garde. 

“Paris Through the Window (1913) (53” x 56”) (Guggenheim Museum, New York) expresses his delight in Paris and the influence of his new friend and colleague Robert Delaunay. Delaunay had developed a style called Orphism (named after the Greek musician) that brought bright colors to Cubism and had influenced the use of pure colors in “I and the Village” and “The Fiddler.” 

Positioning himself in the lower right corner, Chagall is Janus, the two-faced figure. The face at the right looks back to Vitebsk, while the blue face at the left looks to the future. The window is rainbow colored. A yellow cat with a remarkable human face sits on the window ledge and looks into the sky, where a parachutist, Chagall, floats past the Eiffel tower. A man wearing a black suit and carrying a cane, and a woman in green and black wearing a hat, float in the white clouds at the base of the Eiffel tower. The city of Paris stretches across the canvas. 

Smaller details catch the viewer’s attention. On the ground behind the window, a steam train puffs along, upside down. In front of the window, a chair supports a yellow pot full of brightly colored flowers. Beside it, in a light beige triangle is the artist’s signature. The two-faced portrait of the artist includes his blue fingers spread open to display a yellow heart on the palm of his hand. Is Chagall in love with Paris? Yes. Is he in love with Vitebsk? Yes. Is he in love with a woman? Yes.

Through his art, Chagall tells many stories of his life and loves. He uses his art to express his response to world in which he lived: World War I, the Russian Revolution, Nazism and World War II, and the aftermath of war. 

Closing note: This article deals with Chagall’s early art. His long career will be discussed in future articles in the SPY, as his art has much to say about the world today. 

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.