Set Design for The Wedding,

1919

Marc Chagall was born into a Hasidic family in Vitebsk, Belarus, one of the oldest cities in the Russian empire, and one of the few in which Jews were allowed to live and work freely under the czar. In that spirit, the artist sought to create a modern, authentic Jewish art rooted in extensive knowledge of the folk traditions of his people. His lifelong interest in stage design began when he was a student of Leon Bakst, a founding member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement in St. Petersburg. When Chagall’s designs proved too radical for the group, he moved to Paris in 1910, where his fanciful paintings, inspired by folk art and infused with a Cubist style, gained him notoriety at the Salon des Indépendants. In 1914, he returned to Vitebsk, only to be trapped by the outbreak of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Ambivalent about the aims of the Revolution yet encouraged by the promise of social reforms, he accepted a post as commissar for the arts in Vitebsk, founding an art college and museum in 1918. Ultimately labeled a reactionary by his fellow teacher Kazimir Malevich, he was forced from office and returned to Paris in 1923. The Poet dates from Chagall’s period in Vitebsk. In 1919, he was asked by the director of the newly formed Hermitage Theater in Petrograd to design sets and costumes for Nikolai Gogol’s The Wedding (1836). The play is a satirical comedy that revolves around a matchmaker trying to choose one of five reluctant suitors for a wary bride. Comic timing, central to the fast-paced plot, is cleverly indicated by the clock in the drawing. An actor playing Gogol as "the poet" was meant to appear onstage to narrate the tale. Although the production was ultimately canceled, The Poet survives as one of Chagall’s earliest designs for the theater.