Resurrecting Chagall’s Jesus at the Jewish Museum

ART NEWS
By Robin Cembalest

"Persecution" (1941) by Marc Chagall, pastel, gouache and watercolor on paper.

NEW YORK---Marc Chagall is the prototypical Jewish artist, whose green Fiddler on the Roof became an enduring symbol of the precarious, joyful life of Eastern Europe’s Jews. He is less celebrated, though, for his paintings of another iconic figure who obsessed him throughout his career: Jesus. Starting with a line drawing of the Crucifixion he made in 1908 while studying art in St. Petersburg, Chagall depicted Christ on the cross dozens of times. Some Chagall Christs resemble the Eastern Orthodox icons the artist knew from his childhood in Russia. Others don’t look like the Christ in churches anywhere: they wear Jewish prayer shawls in place of a loincloth, and sometimes Tefillin, the leather boxes Jews strap to their foreheads and arms. [link]

The Jewish Museum, New York: “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile,” (Opens September 15) 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St, New York, NY; (212)423-3271, thejewishmuseum.org.