- Person
- Marc Chagall
- Lived
- 1887–1985
- Field
- Painting
- From
- Russian-French
The story
The Palais Garnier, designed by Charles Garnier and opened in 1875, was the home of the Paris Opera and one of the most famous buildings in France. Its auditorium, seating nearly 2,000 people beneath a seven-ton bronze and crystal chandelier, had a ceiling originally painted by Jules-Eugène Lenepveu.
In 1963 André Malraux, France's Minister of Culture, commissioned Marc Chagall to paint a new ceiling for it. The choice was controversial. Some objected to a Russian-born Jew decorating a French national monument, and others disliked the idea of a modern artist painting a historic ceiling.
Chagall, then 77, pressed on and took a year to complete it. The final canvas was nearly 2,400 square feet and required about 440 pounds of paint. It was made in five sections, glued to polyester panels and hoisted up to the 70-foot ceiling, where it was mounted on a removable frame over the original. Its images pay tribute to 14 composers, among them Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Berlioz, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Beethoven, as well as to famous actors and dancers.
It was presented on 23 September 1964 before 2,100 invited guests. As the orchestra played Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, the chandelier lit up to reveal the painting. When it was unveiled, even the bitterest opponents seemed to fall silent, according to his biographer Jacob Baal-Teshuva, and the press declared it a great contribution to French culture. Malraux, who called Chagall one of the great colourists of the age, asked what other living artist could have painted the ceiling as he did.
Two years later Chagall painted two huge murals, The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music, for the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York. In Paris his ceiling still crowns the Palais Garnier, now used mainly for ballet, and it is seen by every audience and the many visitors who tour the building.
Why it matters
Chagall's ceiling brought modern art into one of Europe's great historic buildings and answered prejudice with beauty.
About Marc Chagall
One of the 20th century's most beloved painters; pioneer of modernism rooted in Jewish folk life.
More about Marc Chagall
- Chagall's America Windows celebrate religious freedomMarc Chagall created the America Windows for the Art Institute of Chicago as a tribute to the US Bicentennial and America's commitment to cultural and religious freedom.
- Marc Chagall designed a cathedral window at the age of 90Marc Chagall designed a stained-glass window for Chichester Cathedral at the age of 90, inspired by Psalm 150, and it was unveiled by the Duchess of Kent in 1978.
- Marc Chagall's twelve windows for a Jerusalem hospitalMarc Chagall spent two years creating twelve stained-glass windows of the tribes of Israel for the synagogue of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, installed in February 1962.
- Marc Chagall gave France his Biblical Message paintingsMarc Chagall donated 17 large paintings and 38 gouaches of his Biblical Message series to France, which built a national museum for them in Nice, opened on his birthday in 1973.
- Marc Chagall filled every window of a Kent village churchAll Saints Church in Tudeley, Kent, is the only church in the world with all twelve of its windows by Marc Chagall, installed between 1967 and 1985.
- Marc Chagall founded an art school in his home townIn 1918, as commissar of arts for Vitebsk, Marc Chagall founded the city's People's Art College and an art museum, opening art education to ordinary people.
- Marc Chagall made the Peace window at the United NationsIn 1964 Marc Chagall created Peace, a stained-glass window at the United Nations in New York honouring Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died on a peace mission in 1961.
- Chagall's Mainz windows became a sign of reconciliationFrom 1978, aged 91, Marc Chagall created windows for St Stephan's church in Mainz as a sign of Jewish-Christian friendship, in a city once called the capital of European Jewry.
- Marc Chagall painted murals for Moscow's Jewish theatreFor the 1921 opening of Moscow's State Jewish Chamber Theatre, Marc Chagall painted huge murals of dancers, fiddlers and acrobats that became a landmark in theatre history.
- Marc Chagall preserved a vanished Jewish world in paintMarc Chagall's paintings of Vitebsk, its fiddlers, rabbis and wooden houses, became the most important visual record of East European Jewish life, and inspired Fiddler on the Roof.
Sources
- Marc Chagall Wikipedia
- Palais Garnier Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.