Mar Chagall : De la parole à l'image

This analysis of Marc Chagall’s autobiography, Ma vie (Paris, 1931), focuses on one of the most difficult moments in his existence : the period before the trip that uprooted him from his native town (Vitebsk) and led him for the first time to Paris. This move was so heartbreaking that it necessitated a sort of compensation, which is probably the reason why Chagall sought to identify himself with the familiar « archetype » of the mythical wandering Jew. At the same time, he discovered in the Bible a paradigm he could use to legitimate the exercise of his art, which was alien to Jewish tradition. He adopted the episode of Jacob’s dream to express an analogy between what the patriarch saw in a dream and the illumination at the origin of his own pictural creations. It follows that Chagall saw himself as an ultimate incarnation of a visionary in between divinity and humanity. By depicting himself, either directly or through the figures with whom he identified, Chagall transcended pure description : a complex meditation occurs in his self-portraits between the status and value of his painting.