CONTACT: Jason Pilmaier
jason.pilmaier@marquette.edu
Haggerty Museum of Art
Phone: (414) 288-3657
Fax: (414) 288-5415

Haggerty Museum of Art Opening Marc Chagall:
The Bible Series Exhibition

Released: January 14, 2004

Bella Meyer, Art Historian and granddaughter of Marc Chagall to speak at opening of Bible Series Exhibition

January 22 – March 21

The Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University will open the Marc Chagall: The Bible Series exhibition Thursday, January 22 at 6 p.m. with a lecture by Bella Meyer, art historian and granddaughter of Marc Chagall.   The lecture will take place at the Helfaer Theatre on Marquette University campus. Meyer earned her doctorate in Medieval art at the Sorbonne in Paris and lectures worldwide on the work of her grandfather. In this talk, “Chagall and the Bible” she will focus on the Bible Series and also share memories of Chagall and reflect on the impact of his art and personality.   Meyer works in New York and Paris and is head of Chagall affairs in the United States.   This event is free and open to the public.   A reception will follow at 7 p.m. in the Museum.

Milwaukee Jewish Federation loans Chagall Tapestry for Bible Series exhibition

The Haggerty Museum will display the Chagall tapestry, “The Prophet Jeremiah,” as part of the Marc Chagall: The Bible Series exhibition.   The 14 by 19 foot tapestry is being loaned to the Haggerty Museum for the exhibition by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.  

 

“The Haggerty Museum of Art is pleased to partner with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation in exhibiting this tapestry alongside Chagall's Bible Series,” said museum director Curtis L. Carter.

In 1972, Chagall produced a gouache for The Prophet Jeremiah . Tapestry Weaver Yvette Cauquil-Prince translated this watercolor painting into a cartoon, or full-scale rendering, on the warp threads of a loom. The tapestry was commissioned by Evan Helfaer for the Evan and Marion Helfaer Community Service Building and was manufactured by Turkish and Moroccan weavers. It took them eight months to produce the tapestry which became the first large-scale Chagall weaving in the United States.

 

In the early 1960s, Marc Chagall had several of his designs reproduced as tapestries. He designed three tapestries for the Great Hall of the Knesset (Isreali Parliament) and one for the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall.   These tapestries were manufactured by Gobelins studios in France. In 1964, Chagall met Yvette Cauquil-Prince.   The two artists immediately began collaborating on large-scale tapestries. They produced 29 tapestries over a 20 years period.

Belgium-born artist, Yvette Cauquil-Prince produced more than 80 tapestries for major twentieth-century artists. She studied painting in Paris before training as a tapestry weaver. In 1959, she opened a studio in Paris where she developed new techniques and directed an increasingly large group of weavers. Between 1959 and 1961, she worked primarily with Asger Jorn and Pierre Wemaëre. She also produced tapestries for Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Roberto Matta, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso.

Marc Chagall: The Bible Series

The exhibition will consist of the Museum's entire collection of 105 hand-colored etchings illustrating the Bible bequeathed to the Haggerty Museum in 1980 by Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty. The Bible prints show Chagall's fluid forms, dreamlike sense of space and unique style. In his choice of subject matter, Chagall reveals his reading of the Old Testament in its moments of triumph, sorrow, and prophecy.  

Chagall was commissioned to do the series in 1930 by Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard.   Chagall spent three months in Palestine where he made the gouaches which served as models for the works.   He completed 66 of the plates by 1939 during Hitler's rise to power, returning to the project 13 years later after the Holocaust. He completed the series in 1956.   Chagall demonstrates his preoccupation with human interaction with God in his depiction of passages from the Old Testament.

Chagall's “Bible Series” represents the artist's reflections on major human themes from the Old Testament and their implications for modern times,” said Curtis L. Carter, director of the Haggerty Museum of Art.

Chagall's Bible images often focus on the complex relationship between God and man. Men are called by God to perform great acts, but remain very human, capable of weakness, doubt, deception, lust, and treachery. Jacob, father of the twelve tribes of Israel, deceives his father, Isaac, in order to receive a blessing in place of his brother. Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. David lusts after Bathsheba, subsequently sending an innocent man to his death.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is widely regarded as one of the great artists of the twentieth century.   He created a body of work which includes paintings, prints, theater sets and costumes, murals, and stained-glass windows. Chagall was born in the small Russian town of Vitebsk. He studied art in St. Petersburg and in Paris. After the Russian Revolution, he became head of the Vitebsk art school and later theatrical designer for the Jewish State Theater in Moscow. Chagall traveled widely and lived in Germany, France, and the United States. He became a French citizen in 1937 and settled permanently in France in 1948.

 

The exhibition is sponsored by the Marquette University Women's Council Endowment Fund, the Edward D. Simmons Religious Commitment Fund, Marquette University and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

The Haggerty Museum of Art is located at North 13 th St. and West Clybourn Avenue on the campus of Marquette University. Museum hours are Monday - Wednesday, Friday - Saturday, 10 am-4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 am-8 p.m.; and Sunday, noon-5 p.m.. Free parking is available in the Mary B. Finnigan Parking Lot (enter on 11th St. through Marquette Lot J). For more information on the exhibition or the Haggerty Museum, call (414) 288-1669.