MMFA 2017: Chagall

CHAGALL

COLOUR AND MUSIC

January 28 - June 11, 2017

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Chagall in Canada exhibition event is presented as part of the 2017 Montreal’s 375th anniversary celebration.

Chagall: Colour and Music is the largest exhibition ever devoted to Marc Chagall (1887-1985) in Canada. The exhibition explores the omnipresence of music in the artist’s life and work, through close to 340 works and additional music and documentary film projections. This unusual approach demonstrates the degree to which Chagall’s aesthetic and artistic world is imbued with music, from his paintings, works on paper, costumes, sculptures, ceramics, stained glass and tapestries, as well as theatre stage grand decorative and architectural projects.

Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the MMFA stated: “An artist without borders, Marc Chagall orchestrated a work consisting of many forms of expression: easel painting, mural decor, book illustrations, lithographic collections, stage costumes, sculptures, ceramics, stained glass windows, mosaics… In this score, music provides all the harmony: songs from his childhood, religious prayers, fairs, readings, ballet and opera performances, and of course a broad repertoire from classical (Bach and Mozart) and contemporary (Schoenberg and Messiaen) composers. Here, astonishingly, for the first time, the soundtrack of his life forms the subject of an exhaustive exhibition.”

“This exhibition is an original exploration of all the sounds and all the colours of which the oeuvre of Marc Chagall is made. Multidisciplinary and interactive, with the exceptional works, and the inclusion of music, photographs, and films along the way, it is an invitation to a sensory immersion in the work of one of the most important and remarkable artists of the 20th century,” said Ambre Gauthier, Guest Curator.

The exhibition reveals many imaginative and intriguing costumes rarely seen by the public and some decors produced by the artist for the ballets Aleko (1942), The Firebird (1945) and Daphnis and Chloé (1958-59), and the opera The Magic Flute (1967), thanks to exceptional loans from the Opéra de Paris, the New York City Ballet and the New York Metropolitan Opera. They are staged in such a way as to recreate the particular atmosphere of each show by addition of some special effects.

With fully spatialized musical scores, the exhibition is accompanied by various multimedia devices: music, films, photo slides, and especially an impressive projection of the famous ceiling of the Opéra de Paris in Palais Garnier opera house. In partnership with the Opéra national de Paris, Google lab and Google Art Project in Paris digitized in ultra-high definition this 220 square metres painting, completed by Chagall in 1964. A huge technological challenge, some stunning zoom effects were used for these images to reveal the splendour of the material and the meticulous details of this monumental decor - Chagall’s tribute to 14 composers - which up to now have been invisible to the naked eye.

Following the joint presentation of this exhibition at the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, and La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent de Roubaix in 2015-2016, the Montreal edition has been enhanced by over 100 works, including some rarely loaned masterpieces: Golgotha (1912), Self-portrait with Seven Fingers (1912-1913), the Birth (1911-1912) and the Green Violinist (1923-1924), brought together by some major institutions, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée national d’art moderne (Paris), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (Paris), the Musée national Marc Chagall (Nice), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Fondation Beyeler (Riehen/Bâle) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Twin granddaughters of Marc Chagall attended the Montreal Museum of Fine Art's celebrations of the opening of the exhibition. On January 24, 2017, they participated at the press conference and the press visit of the exhibition, and posed in front of their grandparents' painting: a self-portrait of Marc Chagall with his wife Bella. See below: Meret Meyer, left, and Bella Meyer, with the same first name as her grandmother.

Quote by Bella Meyers, stated at the press conference:

"This exhibition is like a book that opens a possibility of dreams."

This exhibition is highly recommended. It presents  a unique possibility to see so many original works of Marc Chagall right here, in Montreal.

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For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions, visit the museum's website.

You can also read my article about a documentary film on Marc Chagall with a similar topic: Chagall, Painter of the Music here.