He was a modern painter who strayed from Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism, and the term "surrealist" was coined to describe his works, which were picturesque fantasy lands with flying people, winged fish, calves playing musical instruments, and roosters as mounts. It is not difficult to guess that the artist who created these fairy tale-like paintings was Chagall.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's current exhibition, Chagall: The Fantastic Stage, presents Chagall's costume and set designs for four stage productions, which reveal a lesser-known Chagall, the stage designer. Together, we enter Chagall's theater art to see whether it's swarming, colorful or .......
1. Opening: search for "Chagall the painter"
What are people talking about when they talk about Chagall? Curiosity may instigate you to type his name in the search engine, and some beautiful titles will appear on the screen: "Chagall - dream wife", "Chagall and Bella 'Birthday'", "Dreams of a wife", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday", "Birthday". ", "Dreaming of Home - Chagall's I and the Village", "The Fall of Angels and the Nostalgia of Heaven, Chagall's Paintings and... .". This probably sketches the familiar Chagall, a painter of love, homeland and religion.
Figure | Over the Town, Marc Chagall, oil on canvas, 1918
Chagall's paintings have a number of narrative details that are handled freely, seemingly out of proportion and out of order, with fantastical images inflating like bubbles while real people are condensed and juxtaposed. Overlapping blocks of color, inverted and interspersed forms create "an illogical image.
Figure | The White Penalty, Marc Chagall, oil on canvas, 1938
The spontaneous and logical combination and arrangement of Chagall's paintings is something he talked about in an interview with the French magazine Le Figaro at the age of 97: "Do you know how I began to paint? I imitated the illustrations from a dictionary and then put them together in my own order." It's this lack of logic that makes his drawings and designs dreamlike.
Figure | Marc Chagall in front of his work
The three themes of love, hometown and religion seem to play on a loop in his work, constantly interpreting his illogical forms and arrangements, and his desire for repetition quietly familiarizes the viewer with the symbols of Chagall's paintings, but when one occasionally mentions his status as a stage designer, one can't search for the keywords.
Figure | The Magic Flute, Marc Chagall, 1967
In fact, Chagall began experimenting with designing for ballet companies as early as 1911, when he was studying in St. Petersburg. Inspired by the theories of Richard Wagner, he sought to change the way ballet had been performed in the past by fusing music, dance and painting to combine Russian and Western traditions with modernist art.
2. Curtain Up: Chagall's Theater of Dreams
For more than a century, visual artists have been expanding their practice by venturing into the realm of stage design for ballet, theater, and opera, and it can be argued that the stage theatre is a place that can connect art and design, and that the crossover of the artist, or the collaboration of the painter with the theatre director and the designer, is commonplace in modern art: for example The avant-garde experiments of German Expressionist artists Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus in the early 1930s.
Figure | Ballet for Three, OskarSchlemmer's Laboratory, Ballet, 1922
Schlemmer had founded a theater workshop at the Bauhaus Academy in order to disseminate his theatrical ideas and premiered his experimental ballet Ballet for Three in September 1922 at the Stuttgart Theater. His approach to theater emphasized a sense of ritual to highlight the stage's detachment from the real world, and through stylized movements and costumes, he emphasized the connection between the human body and the human body, and the human being's existence in the space around him.
Figure | Character modeling for Ballet for Three, Oscar Slim's Laboratory, Ballet Theatre, 1922
Then there were the experimental collaborations between artists, composers, and dancers at Black Mountain College in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. Theatre that crossed borders often provided chic interpretations of dramatic works and created a different kind of stage vision. Since 1911, Chagall has collaborated with Russian, Mexican, New York and Parisian theater and opera houses, adding fantasy and innovative designs to the stage.
Photo | Marc Chagall's set for The Magic Flute
Photo | Marc Chagall's set for The Magic Flute, 1967
Act I: 1942: Aleko
Chagall was eager to design for the Russian theater, and in 1942 he created a new stage for the production of the Pushkin narrative poem based on the work of Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff. Pushkin's long narrative poem "The Gypsies," designing costumes and stage backdrops for the opera "Aleko" by Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff.
Figure | Stage Set for Aleko, Marc Chagall, 1942
Aleko tells the story of Aleko, an aristocratic Russian intellectual, who is tired of his dead-end life as an aristocrat and falls in love with a gypsy woman, the True Lady. So he leaves the familiar comfort of his home and follows her to join a free nomadic band of gypsies. However, two years later, Zenith falls in love with another young Gypsy. Angry and desperate, Aleko kills the lovers. The Gypsies buried Zenith and her lover and "left the terrible mountain valley, and soon they all disappeared into the far reaches of the steppe", leaving only Aleko, alone in the wilderness.
Figure | Stage Set for Aleko: A Summer Afternoon in the Meadow, Marc Chagall, 1942
In his design for the stage curtain, Chagall weakened perspective and emphasized color, presenting a glowing palette of colors, depicting the regulars of his paintings, such as roosters walking in the air, and lovers in flight, in large blocks of passionate yellows and rich blues. When the actors perform in the theater in costumes designed by Chagall, it is as if a Chagall painting is being projected.
Picture | Aleko costume design, Marc Chagall, 1942
Picture | Aleko costume, Marc Chagall, 1942
Picture | Aleko costume design, Marc Chagall, 1942
Picture | Aleko costume design, Marc Chagall, 1942
Picture | Aleko costume, Marc Chagall, 1942
Picture | Aleko costume, Marc Chagall, 1942
This is the first time that Chagall has designed a costume. Costumes, Marc Chagall, 1942
Chagall's costumes for Aleko fit the tone of the ballet, with a light sadness underneath the fresh elements. We seem to see Chagall's overlapping blocks of color, inverted and interspersed forms, and the flying fish, blue horses, and foxes that often appear in his paintings.......
Photo | Aleko Costumes, Marc Chagall, 1942
Photo | Aleko Costumes, Marc Chagall, 1942
Photo | Aleko Costumes, Marc Chagall, 1942
Photo Aleko animal design, Marc Chagall, 1942
Figure |Aleko animal design, Marc Chagall, 1942
The design is underpinned by a prose mindset that exudes a dreamy, freewheeling quality, so that the viewer is not mistaken for blue skies and orange wheat fields, but rather realizes that this is a piece of artfully crafted art. Instead, the viewer realizes that this is an artistically crafted set. Though "Aleko" tells a tragic story of love, the marvelous staging and dreamy curtains create a tragic theater of beauty.
Figure |Aleko animal design, Marc Chagall, 1942
Act II: 1945: Firebird
The theatrical design of Aleko was a refreshing change of pace for the time, and it opened up further opportunities for Chagall. In 1945, the New York City Ballet commissioned set and costume designs for Stravinsky's ballet Firebird.
Picture | Firebird Set: Firebird and Prince in the Forest, Marc Chagall, 1945
Picture | Firebird Set: Firebird in the Forest, Marc Chagall, 1945
The story of Firebird is based on Russian mythology, and tells of a young prince, Ivan, who by chance catches a firebird late at night in the forest. catches a firebird. After she begs him to let her go, and offers to give him a reddish feather as a token that he will come to her aid in time of need, Ivan sets the beautiful bird free.
Figure | FirebirdSet: Firebird Returning to Freedom, Marc Chagall, 1945
At night, Ivan discovers the castle of the demon king, Cachet, in the forest, and sees thirteen royal princesses, who have been abducted from the castle by Cachet, playing with apples of gold, and who will have to return to Cachet's palace at dawn to be secluded. The prince attempts to rescue the princesses, but is captured by the monsters of the Demon King Kachee.
Figure | Firebird: Firebird to the Rescue, Marc Chagall, 1945
In the midst of the crisis, Ivan remembers the feathers of the Firebird, who has kept his promise and comes to the rescue and casts a spell to kill Cachey, the Demon King. When the light returns, the princesses are freed. In the end, Ivan marries the 13th princess as he wishes, and the ending is a happy one.
Figure | Firebird: The Lover, Marc Chagall, 1945
In the balletic narrative of Firebird, Chagall creates a variety of fantastical creatures and monsters to set the theatrical tone.
Figure | Firebird, draft of Monster 1, Marc Chagall, 1945
Figure | Firebird, draft of Monster 1, Marc Chagall, 1945
Figure | Firebird, draft of Monster 2, Marc Chagall, 1945
Figure | Firebird Firebird Monster Group, Marc Chagall, 1945
He designed more than 80 costumes for the show, many of which were made from new materials, including sheer and colorful printed fabrics, and featured collage-style appliqués and intricate embroidery.
Figure | Cachet, Firebird, Marc Chagall, 1945
For example, the costume of the demon Cachet, whose dark soul is expressed in dark colors, uses transparent materials for the cloak, which is wild and chaotic against a red background, contrasting with the clean and tidy costume of the front figure.
Picture | Firebird costume, Marc Chagall, 1945
Picture | Firebird stage, Marc Chagall, 1945
Act III: 1967: The Magic Flute
In Chagall's design, the character's good and evil attributes can be expressed through the character's costume and his or her dark soul. attributes of good and evil can be easily recognized by the character's costume and look. The same rule applies to the Metropolitan Opera's 1967 commission for Mozart: Magic Flute, for which Chagall once again created the sets and costumes.
Figure | The Magic Flute Dark Kingdom group pose, Marc Chagall, 1967
To create the stage backdrops and costumes, he spent three years designing 121 costumes that challenged the complexity of the opera house's shifting scenes, Chagall emphasized color contrasts and accentuated the aesthetics of geometric forms in this drama to build the fantastical spaces and convey dramatic narratives.
Figure | Draft modeling for The Magic Flute, Marc Chagall, 1967
Figure | Modeling for The Magic Flute, Marc Chagall, 1967
The Magic Flute, one of Mozart's four most remarkable operas, is based on a piece called "Lulu" from the poet Wieland's collection of children's stories, "Kinnistan". a fairy tale called The Magic Flute of Lulu. The story tells of Tamino, an Egyptian prince who is chased by a giant snake and saved by the courtesan of the Dark Queen, who tells the prince that her daughter has been snatched by the villainous Sarastro and wants him to rescue her.
Figure | The Magic Flute Set: Night and the Queen, Marc Chagall, 1967
She takes out a portrait of her daughter, Pamina, and shows it to the prince, who falls in love with her at first sight and readily agrees to rescue Pamina. When the prince departs, the queen presents him with a magic flute with which he can play enchanted music.
Figure | The Magic Flute: Playing the Magic Flute, Marc Chagall, 1967
The fact that Sarastro is the Master of Wisdom, the leader of the Kingdom of Light, and that the husband of the Queen of Darkness left his daughter, Pamina, in his hands before his death, is a source of great resentment to the Queen of Darkness, who seeks to destroy the Kingdom of Light. The Dark Queen is very upset and tries to destroy the Temple of Light to get her daughter back. Prince Tamino endured all sorts of tests, recognized the Queen's conspiracy, and finally and Pamina married.
Pic | The Magic Flute: The Triumph of Justice, Marc Chagall, 1967
Chagall used stylization to differentiate between the Queen of the Kingdom of Darkness and the leader of the Kingdom of Light, the two opposing forces of Sarastro. Chagall's stylization of the two opposing characters, the Queen of the Kingdom of Darkness and the leader of the Kingdom of Light, reveals the theme of the play and the wish of his heart: that the light will triumph over the darkness.
Picture | The Magic Flute, Queen of Darkness, Marc Chagall, 1967
Picture | The Magic Flute, Queen of Darkness, Marc Chagall, 1967
Picture | The Magic Flute, King of Light, Marc Chagall, 1967
Picture | The Magic Flute, King of Light, Marc Chagall, 1967
This is the first time that the play has been produced. Chagall, 1967
Chagall's stage designs interpreted his own concepts: animal figures such as sheep, cows, chickens, horses, fish and flowers, violins and bells appeared in his designs. These vocabularies also appear in his paintings, but in the theater, they create the emotional atmosphere of different scenarios, rendering the atmosphere and tone of different plays, and at the same time, he also uses color to imply the attributes of good and evil characters and the plot of the play. In this way, in Chagall's theater, there is no risk of taking people by their appearance, and no difficulty in distinguishing good from evil.
3. Curtain Call: Why Design?
Chagall brought the characteristics of his paintings to the stage theater, and in his design he seemed to be guided by a simple philosophy: good is beautiful. In a drama with a narrative plot and emotional color, one can better understand the good intentions behind Chagall's so-called beautiful design. Chagall once wrote, "In the war, there were so many displaced poor people that I wanted to bring them all to my canvas and stage so that they could live in peace."
Figure | The Magic Flute, Marc Chagall, 1967
The trials of war also left their mark on Chagall's designs. Everything seemed to break down, and perspective, form, line, and color blocking revealed an uneasy turmoil, but in the end, it was the bright colors, the lovely images, that glued Chagall's dreamy theater together. His art always has good intentions: "With the human compassion and love contained in it, we can fly towards the ideal, leaving behind for posterity the innovations of our time, we hope to clear the earth of its turmoil, and to find happiness in the bright colors, so that art can enter the kingdom of heaven like Mozart's overture." Isn't that what Romain Rolland said, "See the world and love it? "
Figure | The Magic Flute set, Marc Chagall, 1967