Two of Marc Chagall's most famous paintings, Me and My Village
(1911) and Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers (1912-13) represent the
artist's early attempts to incorporate Cubism —
with its multiple points of view and geometrical shapes —
into his compositions. So, too, are these two paintings emblematic of the
expatriate condition of the traditional Jew in the modern world.
Chagall (1887-1985) grew up in the Bellorussian village of Vitebsk,
the eldest son of a Hassidic laborer. While he spent most of his life in France,
he never stopped returning to Vitebsk in his mind and in his art. In Self-Portrait
with Seven Fingers two landscapes hover above the painter, the modernity
of Paris meeting the timelessness of Vitebsk.
In Study for Self Portrait with Seven Fingers, Chagall
presents us with the Jewish fascination with numbers. Art historian Sandor
Kuthy suggests that the Yiddish folk expression Mit alle zibn finger,
used to indicate the entirety of energy used in completion of a task, explains
this strange physical anomaly in the painting. Writes art student Marleene
Rubenstein, "An enriched reading is gained in knowing that the number
seven is heavy with mystical overtones in Jewish expression, figuring strongly
with the concept of creation. God created the world in seven days. The Kabbalah
states that God created seven parallel universes to our physical one. The
three fathers and the four mothers in the Bible gave birth to the Jewish nation.
With his seven fingers, Chagall creates new worlds with paint on canvas."[*]
Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers was Chagall's first self-portrait.
It was painted in his first Paris studio at La Ruche, Montparnasse where he
and 200 fellow artists lived in total squalor. The painting is now shown in
the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
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[*] Marleene
Rubenstein, "Searching for the Second Soul: The Hasidic Etymology
of the Early Visual Language of Marc Chagall" from paper written
in response to Professor Karen Kleinfelder's university course, Twentieth
Century Art to 1945 |
