Die Farbe hat mich. Ich brauche nicht nach ihr zu haschen. Sie hat mich für immer, ich weiß das. Das ist der glücklichen Stunde Sinn: ich und die Farbe sind eins. Ich bin Maler.

Paul Klee – Tagebuch

As an unwavering admirer of the Impressionist movement in the history of visual arts, I found myself a little bit perplexed when, through a strange string of accidents, I came across another biography of the Taschen edition, this time dedicated to a painter whose bold highlight of shape and colour I find nothing short of prophetic, yet I feel strangely detached from the trysts of rigid logic with high-flown imagination pervading his style.

The artworks of Paul Klee make it almost impossible for one to square them into the boundaries of an art movement, and for me personally also hard to interpret, since very often I found myself struggling in trying to get hold of a secret clue that would unlock the meaning of a painting for me. More often than not I ended up with none, having to rely solely on my intuition and feeling to guide me through the splendid maze of his secrecies and allusions.

Die Farbe ist erstens Qualität. Zweitens ist sie Gewicht, denn sie hat nicht nur einen Farbwert, sondern auch einen Helligkeitswert. Drittens ist sie auch noch Maß, denn sie hat außer den vorigen Werten noch ihre Grenzen, ihren Umfang, ihre Ausdehnung, ihr Meßbares. Das Helldunkel ist erstens Gewicht, und in seiner Ausdehnung bzw. Begrenzung ist es zweitens Maß. Die Linie aber ist nur Maß.

Paul Klee – Vortrag, Januar 1924

Despite the occasional inconsistency of delightful exploration I saw myself subjected to, one pronounced trait of Klee’s paintings was fully capable of wringing peals of admiration from me, that being the artist’s audacious exertion of his natural propensity for colour and its experimental usage over all of his artwork, which sometimes reminded me of the timbres of sound one is able to extract with much lyricism from a musical instrument.

Considering Klee’s initial indecision when it came to choosing a life path between music and the visual arts, it is only natural that the one should, to a degree, transmute into the other, thus finding its voice in colour instead of a music hall.

The demonstration of his amazing sensitivity for colour I consider to be his Kairouan aquarelles, created during a visit in Tunisia in 1914. The lightness and vibrancy of the shades applied say much of his exploration of light and its play upon the city.

The return from his voyage saw Klee’s subsequent drifting off into the lands of the abstract, where nature and objects of solidity lose rapidly in their importance, and a heavy emphasis on shape gains the forefront in the artist’s work instead. While the application of colour builds a steady tension with each completed artwork like a bridge across the gulf between his early works and his blooming maturity, the land of the abstract was precisely where I had to start fishing for clues and innuendos that would propel me to unveil the chromatic mystery of Klee’s paintings, pastels and aquarelles.

Kunst gibt nich das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar. Das Wesen der Graphik verführt leicht und mit Recht zur Abstraktion. Schemen- und Märchenhaftigkeit des imaginären Charakters ist gegeben und äußert sich zugleich mit großer Präzision. Je reiner die graphische Arbeit, das heißt, je mehr Gewicht auf die der graphischen Darstellung zugrunde liegenden Formelemente gelegt ist, desto mangelhafter die Rüstung zur realistischen Darstellung sichtbarer Dinge.

Paul Klee – Schöpferische Konfession, 1920

One of my definite favourites was Ad Parnassum, representing the peak of Klee’s artistic powers influenced by his travels to Egypt in 1928, and this mosaic closely following the effervescent style of pointillism aptly illustrates and summarizes what I admire about Klee’s work most – a strong sense of colour boldly underlined by an inventiveness of shape, creating a unique experiment that eventually grasps one by the senses, inviting into the discovery of a highly individualistic expression.

« L’œuvre de Rodin est pareille à un monde immense, et son génie évoque l’idée d’une force naturelle dont la puissance créatrice emprunte, pour se manifester, tous les verbes d’art. »

Roger Marx, 1907

Elemental force palpitates in those veins of marble, veins of bronze. The wondering eyes are reposed and quiet, fixing their blind stare at the white stucco and the polished mirrors covering the walls as though searching for a reflection of yesterday, but no trace of agitation, no blemish of regret blurs now their intent look, for they are at peace. Time itself stands still in motionless trepidation while they breathe – ever so softly, holding silent vigil over each other’s heartbeat locked within a chest of stone.

A man’s hands once touched the rough surface with tenderness, and poetry was carved in stone, music written in clay. The labour of all creation begins in dirt and dust and tears; and it is true that small things grow and achieve their splendour only under the eyes of love.

His touch breathed life into the whispering stone, and they rose one after the other – with shy hesitation at first, gaining courage as each stroke of chisel made the contours swell and stir, moulding a ladnscape of longing and emotion halted in time. And there he was, John the Baptist preaching to Dante’s Inferno; Adam banished from Eden with Eve hiding her face in anguish of shame and misery; and the Thinker who was a poet before the world became too heavy, too soaked with grief and questions.

But grief would never have come, had he been deprived of his companion, the one who always precedes him; for that is the law of life – one must always make place for that which comes next until the cycle is completed; life is never linear. How lucky they are, the Lovers, to be so frozen in their moment of exaltation before the tremulous ache of parting begins; their embrace a shelter of warmth where they are forever discovering the satin folds of each other’s lips until they both forget – in the humility of complete surrender – where the one begins and the other ends.

Two temples entwined in a prayer, like fingertips barely touching in timid reverence, and a Cathedral was built, born of the mélange of suffering and sweetness that distance entails. Distance between two hands yearning to fuse, distance between the prayer and the answer. But distance allows for space and air breathing gently in that void, supporting the Cathedral like vaulted arches so that it may stand through fires and centuries in a sigh of quiet perseverance.

And perhaps they are already one, do not exist, in fact, but within each other, like the sculptor and his work.

He gave birth with a thought and a pair of hands, but they are not reason enough to sustain his art, they are not his legacy to posterity. For what is a thought? A thought is selfish, living a life of its own; it swells, it spirals, ascends, and suddenly vanishes in an opaque veil, leaving no trace of yesterday and no hope for tomorrow. No, do not give me a thought, for it may perish only too easily, and it is permanence that art requires. There must be a higher constant, a solid rock upon which a new life may begin.

Let me say out loud then, in the solitude of my mornings and the loneliness of my nights, that which he too wanted to say with his marble and his stone, that which he wanted to express even through faces contorted with anguish and pain: I love – therefore I am.

*hommage à Auguste Rodin, écrit au Musée Rodin, Juin 2019

« Je m’appelle Marc, j’ai l’intestin très sensible et pas d’argent, mais on dit que j’ai du talent. »

Marc Chagall – Ma vie

Numerous attributes come to my mind each time my eyes brush against a canvas bearing the indelible Chagall signature, the most prominent of which would certainly be tenderness, and reverie. The timeless charm, a certain childlike naïveté of his depictions combined with the iridescent hue of colours make for a unique experience that touches the soul. Above all that, there is also an element of incomparable seduction and invitation in Chagall, encouraging one in a very intimate engagement with his work through its astounding richness of meaning that offers a plenitude of interpretation. As in a dream one is transported into a world where each colour has its own definite implication and context, where mere shapes tell their own stories, where cultural influence espouses deeper spiritual significance.

Born in 1887 in Vitebsk, the firstborn of nine children, Chagall’s life, like his work, gives the impression of a pilgrim in a constant movement between worlds and between cities, rising from humble origin into a wealthy milieu, traveling the world and yet longing for the warm place of simplicity and familiarity that is so strikingly evident mainly in his touching depiction of village life where family, religion, nature and music are closely interconnected. A child of a devoted Jewish family, his decision to embark on an artist’s path was definitely not without obstacles, but a steady flow of artistic output that followed his starting point at the studio of Yehuda Penn in 1906 shows a man wholeheartedly devoted to a vocation that he with the same characteristic charm reflected also in his paintings made entirely his own.

« Muni de mes vingt-sept roubles, les seuls que j’aie reçus de mon père, dans ma vie (pour mon enseignement artistique), je m’enfuis, toujours rose et frisé, à Petersbourg, suivi de mon camarade. C’était décidé. »

Marc Chagall – Ma Vie

As I was able to follow Chagall’s life through his artwork thanks to a beautifully arranged biography of the Taschen painters edition, I felt as though I were entering a world where even time itself pauses to take a deep breath in its wild race towards eternity, where the only thing that matters is to watch with eyes and heart wide open to fully perceive the beauty, the depth of the moment captured with both intensity and gentleness that the painter offers, as if he were giving each of his paintings a life of its own. One of the most suggestive examples of this realm of peaceful quiet and halted time I found in the Le Poète allongé, whose relatively restrained and subdued hues endow the scenery with an air of fragility and profound calmness spreading like a blanket over the poet’s dream, and the painting seems as though knitted from the melody of the famous Schumann Träumerei. I don’t think it would be very far from truth to say that one almost feels invited into the poet’s dream, a dream that remains thus locked in one’s imagination yet becomes an integral part of the whole experience this painting evokes.

« J’ouvrais seulement la fenêtre de ma chambre et l’air bleu, l’amour et les fleurs pénétraient avec elle. Toute vêtue de blanc ou tout en noir, elle survole depuis longtemps à travers mes toiles, guidant mon art. »

Marc Chagall – Ma vie

Another theme pervading Chagall’s work like the scent of cherry blossoms is the one inspired by his great love for his fiancée and later his first spouse Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, whom he married in 1915 – an event resulting in L’Anniversaire, a deeply touching testimony to the purity of the couple’s love where the tenderly kissing pair, the cozy room evoking the glow of a newfound happiness, the village behind the window and the little bouquet in Bella’s hands make one the privileged witness of a very personal moment. Accordingly, an apt choice of colours accompanies this scene of marital bliss where the bolder tones of red emanating warmth are finely balanced with the cooling shades of black, grey, white and blue. What fascinates me particularly about this painting is the great emphasis on an exquisite work of detail like that of the embroidered tapestry in the background, and the table with objects of daily usage, bringing to the picture also the pleasurable, earthy presence of the quotidian as a pillar of solidity amidst this fluttering, amorous dream.

« L’essentiel, c’est l’art, la peinture, une peinture différente de celle que tout le monde fait. Mais laquelle ? Dieu, ou je ne sais plus qui, me donnera-t-il la force de pouvoir souffler dans mes toiles mon soupir, soupir de la prière et de la tristesse, la prière du salut, de la renaissance ? »

Marc Chagall – Ma vie

The third major object of the painter’s brush is not merely a religion clothed in Chagall’s unique perception of colour and concept; the spiritual dimension which the painter so generously bestows upon majority of his artworks with Judeo-Christian motives entails also all the tragedy, loneliness and suffering stemming from a deep devotion to the word of God which many a spiritual person encounters in life. In his paintings, the reality of suffering being inseparable from a life of faith comes in repeated patterns, as though the very history of the Israelites and their tribulations across the centuries were the core of Chagall’s principal inspiration. Just like in Le Juif en prière, his painting of a solitary Jew in Solitude holding a roll of Torah firmly in his hands while absorbed in pensive melancholy reveals much of the pain of those loyal to their ethnoreligious background, and also grimly and eerily foretells all the terrors to come during the Second World War.

« Mais mon art, pensais-je, est peut-être un art insensé, un mercure flamboyant, une âme bleue, jaillissant sur mes toiles. »

Marc Chagall – Ma vie

Chagall’s pallette is not only bursting with a whole array of tonal progression, making one highly susceptible to each slight shift of mood in his paintings, but it also offers a unique walk down the memory lane into the innocent days of childhood where the simple joys of everyday existence were a pretext enough for merry celebration, like in Le Violoniste where an old musician with a young beggar boy by his side share the extatic moment of a freshly married couple standing timidly in the background, as though abashed by the very magnitude of their own happiness – not merely a depiction of a Jewish wedding, but also a passionate celebration of life in its unstoppable cycle of constant rebirth, the rebirth of love and hope, underlined by the choice of earthy tones evoking the certitude of repetition.

As it is the case with all great artists, Chagall’s work and life are united in an intimate relationship where the one mirrors the other with much ebullience, sensitivity and deep reflection to a degree when it is no longer possible to retell the painter’s biography without a careful and attentive study of his magnificent, multi-faceted paintings full of playful hints and allusions, chromatic gradation and deep love above all; love towards the world with all its sorrows and towards art itself, for it is art that serves as a saving rope which connects the world of emotion with the world of reality and helps to sustain the latter by expressing, expanding and nurturing, with loving care, the former.