![]() ![]() Only that one house is red, like a crimson red heart pulsating in the rhythm of love. The houses and the landscape under them both seem faded, as if seen in a dream or in a memory, painted in shades of grey. Painting “Over the Town” shows an embracing couple flying above the little houses of the little town which is now too small to contain the vastness of the love that they feel. Chagall is holding her hand but he too will quickly rise into the clouds following his darling. ![]() Chagall takes the phrase “floating in the air” quite literally because in these paintings the lovers are flying indeed the power of their love is so strong that not even gravity can stop it.”The Promenade” shows Chagall and Bella having a picnic on a meadow outside town but then suddenly Bella is flying in the air like a pink ballon. ![]() There is a playful innocence and a pure display of affections in these paintings that chimes with me so well. Their early days of love are captured in a series of paintings such as “Birthday”, “Promenade” and “Over the Town”. The figure that always haunts his art is the slender figure of a black haired woman his beloved wife Bella Rosenfeld. Chagall is the most tender-hearted man in the world of art and his innocent, imaginative and childlike vision of the world is obvious in his canvases. In Chagall’s art the “down to earth” and “dreamy” meet and collide in a perfect way. It’s like threading over the fresh snow and leaving no footprints. Even when the space around the lovers is real, with its little cottages, wooden fences, cows, goats, fiddlers and mud, this ugly banality is transformed and transcended, it is as if the lovers are completely untouched by it all. Dancing in the sky in the rhythm of each other’s hearts, floating through the night sky like shooting stars. A blue sky with a large full moon and a bird flying by is seen emerging from the bottom right side of the canvas.Ĭhagall’s lovers don’t live in the real, material, tangible world around us, no, they live in the realm of love, in the soft, feathery, fragrant and sweet clouds of love. The crimson colour of the woman’s dress is echoed by the fuchsia coloured background and in the colour of the roses on the right side of the painting. She is looking into the future and he is holding onto her. While the woman is gazing in the distance, the man’s head is leaned on her shoulder, as if seeking comfort. The motif of lovers is something that pervades Chagall’s canvases. The painting, as suggested in the title, shows two lovers lost in an embrace, floating somehere in the sky, somewhere in the world of their own. In particular, I am enjoying gazing at his painting “The Lovers” from 1928. These days I am not merely thinking about Marc Chagall’s artworks – I am living in them, and oh my, what a wonderful place to live in. ![]()
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