Marc Chagall (1887-1985) .The stained glass window of the Creation...corresponding more to solar representations.

When the painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985) agreed for the first time to create the stained glass windows of a cathedral, that of Metz in 1959, he was at the same time revealing a secret part of his art. Chagall also knew how to play admirably with the opposition of colors to bring out and oppose different worlds and stories. Each time, he knew how to use these strong oppositions by using different pigments to make us discover another reality. Thus, on the one hand, we discover the quasi-monochromy of yellow in the stained glass window of the Creation, this one corresponding more to solar representations.On the other hand, the midnight blue with the fiery red of the two bays of the interior ambulatory seem to be more associated with nocturnal, crepuscular, telluric but also lunar images. On the one hand, that of the stained glass window of the Creation which narrates the paradisiacal scenes where Eve and Adam evolve with the dominant yellow. And on the other hand, the other world, that of the aftermath of the fall, of the exit from Eden, according to the two bays of the interior ambulatory. These relate the history of the chosen people, with dark and violent colors such as night blue and fire red. All this to signify that we are no longer in the Edenic times but in those where humanity will know sin and death. At the same time, one will also notice that each stained glass window is crossed by an astonishing dynamism. This dynamism increases and always evolves in the same direction, from left to right. Thus we can follow the story of each representation always in the same direction.

The first stained glass window, that of the Creation, begins in the first lancet with the scene of the creation of the man Adam and finally ends in the last lancet with the expulsion of the couple Adam and Eve from paradise. At the same time, in the other two bays of the interior ambulatory, we see a long historical continuum that goes from the Sacrifice of Isaac to the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. It is worth noting that each time, the story told by the stained glass windows ends with a dramatic exit!

Finally, the deep source of this dynamism must be sought in Hasidism, a Jewish religious movement that strongly influenced Chagall. Most of the Israelites in Vitebsk were all Hasidim. For the Hasid, spontaneous emotion counts as much as the law or the rite. Hence the painter's insistence on often showing us festive scenes where everyone gives free rein to the expression of their spontaneous joy. Thus, often the Chagallian characters seem to be invaded by this enthusiasm inherited from Hasidism. This Russian painter succeeds in associating us with the vitality of the spectacle of human history to a more intense force that animates us. This mysterious divine energy, is it not ultimately what this artist wants to reveal to us with this other reality? To lead us in fact to fly always higher in the image of his Luftmensch?

This is not surprising, since the artist has always been a special case in modern painting. While abstraction appeared to many as the ultimate achievement of pictorial creation, he, on the contrary, always clung as fiercely to figuration. Not because of a concern for conformism or academicism, but rather because he considered it to be the most appropriate way to show another reality. Revealing notably by the magic of the representation and the color, the inaccessible, the unsuspected because this artist had always had the concern to reveal the most intimate and the most mysterious thing of the being. Father Couturier (1897-1954), who first encouraged him to work as a stained glass artist in the church of Assy in 1956-1957, had well grasped the soul of this painter by affirming that: "Chagall is not an explorer of the depths of the soul: he is a tree with deep roots whose fruits have the color of the Sun. But it is also thanks to his work on the Bible that the brush of this painter will allow other discoveries. The effect of the saving storm of the God of the Old Testament will indeed act powerfully on him. Hence the same impression that the visible reality of this painter becomes something else thanks to his palette. However, if his representations surprise by their sometimes irrational side, he is not for all that a surrealist painter, even if he makes us reach another world. Later, when he discovered at the age of 70 the possibilities offered by the technique of stained glass, it is also undeniable that this art of luminescence will stimulate his inspiration even more. The first cathedral of his career, the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Metz, will give him the opportunity to highlight certain facets of this other reality. First of all, to bring it out, he knew how to take advantage of a perfect use of the place. Indeed, his first stained glass windows often located in a relatively dark and secluded space will lead him to develop more than elsewhere his proximity to the painter Rembrandt, painter of the soul and chiaroscuro. Then, another complicity that we discover in this painter is that with Jacob, the patriarch of the Bible, with whom he will be able to emphasize his Luftmensch. Finally, he will play more than elsewhere with the partitions and polarities that underlie all his work. On this occasion also, he will be able to highlight with great mastery all the force that animates his stained glass work, which is totally subordinated to movement and dynamism. When he was offered to work for the cathedral of Metz, he was initially quite disappointed with the spaces he was given. Indeed, he was initially offered to practice his art in relatively secluded and dark areas of the cathedral, since they were located in the north apse, more precisely in the inner ambulatory. With the windows located at the beginning of the choir's perimeter and where the sun practically never appeared, his work might not benefit from maximum visibility and this had not escaped the painter. So he began with the window furthest back, the one with three lancets, and then the one further forward with four lancets. He called this three lancet window the "wounded stained glass window". Chagall called it that because the left side of the window was cut off when the turret was created, giving it a lame look. The median axis of the rose window is indeed off-center to the left of the current median axis of the lancets. As we will see later, Chagall knew perfectly how to illustrate his world by playing on partitions and polarities. Here, in these dark spaces, it will be the world of the night and the penumbra representing the lunar star opposed to the world of the day and the Sun. The solar world will be the one he will inaugurate some time later in the North transept with the stained glass window of the Creation. This is why, as a painter and to illuminate and "counterbalance" this world of night, he will use two dominant colors which are the dark blue associated with the aggressive red. He thus uses his proven technique of the preponderant color. This technique goes back to his very first years in painting, during his years spent in Saint Petersburg in 1906-1907. His master at the time, Leon Bakst, always advised him to limit the world of colors to better dominate them. During this same period, he also produced a number of paintings with scenes that took place mostly at night (The Birth, The Peasant Woman Eating, The Kermesse, The Procession, The Holy Family). His taste for tenebrism brings him closer to Caravaggio, but especially to Rembrandt. One can also explain his attraction for the half-light because, for lack of means, he worked at the time most often in a cramped room in St. Petersburg which was particularly dark. Thus, the affinities with the great Flemish painter will become more and more obvious. Firstly, in the use of chiaroscuro, which Chagall had to use in view of the places where he had to execute his work, in particular in the interior ambulatory of the cathedral in Metz. Then in the treatment itself of certain scenes. Indeed, we discover obvious similarities with a Rembrandt painting of 1635 when he tackles the first lancet of the four lancet stained glass window, in the scene of the Sacrifice of Isaac. We see the same strong chromatic opposition of contrasts between the dark blue in Chagall's work or the dark brown in Rembrandt's that invades the figure of Abraham and the whitish clarity of Isaac's body. We also detect an identical treatment in the softness and transparency of the half-tones. In these two painters, the same effects of light modulation are used to reveal the deep truth of the beings. Chagall, in this stained glass window, plays on the variation of blues, going from the most intense and darkest to the most luminous. In the same way, in these two artists, Isaac is violently illuminated while we never really see his eyes. We cannot see the victim's gaze because it is the gaze of God that we risk encountering. The work is here an unveiling. The artist then reveals another reality: the victim will be recognized by God and saved by him alone!.

www.blelorraine.fr/2021/05/des-vitraux-de-chagall-a-la-ca...

Taken on: December 14, 2023

Tags:

Chagall

Marc.Chagall

Cathedral

stainded

glass

Stainded-Glass-Window

vitrail

1959 « less

Sets appears in: • Enlightenment, Light Body

Stats: 2,108 views