- 21
Marc Chagall
Description
- Marc Chagall
- La Saoul
- Signed and dated Chagall Paris 13 (lower right)
- Brush and pen drawing in India ink heightened with white over pencil on paper
- 8 3/4 by 11 1/4 in.
- 22.2 by 28.7 cm
Provenance
Nell Walden, Bern (acquired from the above)
Eberhart Kornfeld, Bern
Acquired from the above
Exhibited
Bern, Kunstmuseum, Der Sturm, 1944-45
Basel, Kunsthalle, Der Sturm, 1946
Stockholm, National Museum, 1954
Zürich, Kunsthaus, Der Sturm, 1950
Copenhagen, Charlottenborg, Chagall/Kokoschka, 1960
Bern, Kornfeld und Klipstein, Ausstellung 1864-1964, Zeichnungen-Aquarelle, 1964, no. 33
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 85th Anniversary "Early Graphics," 1972
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Marc Chagall, 1907-1917, 1997
Literature
Der Sturm, Berlin, June 1914, illustrated on the cover and p. 41
Kunstdruck des Verlages "Sturm," 1918
Philippe Soupault, Rose des Vents, Paris, 1920, illustrated p. 4
Lionello Venturi, Marc Chagall, New York, 1945, illustrated p. 18
Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Chagall: Zwischen Tag und Traum Feldafing, 1955
Werner Schmalenbach, Chagall, New York, 1956, illustrated p. 10
Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Cologne, 1961, illustrated p. 138
Marc Chagall, Oeuvres sur papier (exhibition catalogue), Musée national d'Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1984, illustrated p. 40
Kurt Schwitters, Poems, Performances, Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics, Philadelphia, 1993, illustrated p. 24
Dorothea Dietrich, The Collage of Kurt Schwitters, Tradition and Innovation, Cambridge, 1995, fig. 32, illustrated p. 88
Marc Chagall, Les années russes, 1907-1922 (exhibition catalogue), Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1995, illustrated p. 237
Catalogue Note
The present composition is a wonderful Cubist-inspired work that Chagall completed in the early part of his career. Its mélange of subject matter -- a disembodied drinker, animal head, dead fish and still-life -- are extraordinarily prescient in that it previews the mysticism and animal motifs that would dominate the paintings of Chagall's late career. In 1911 the artist first rendered a related composition in oil and gouache called L'absinthe but then moved on to execute the present work in 1913. This drawing was later featured on the cover of the avant-garde periodical, Der Sturm (see fig. 1). So artistically daring and inspiring was Chagall's off-kilter imagery that the German Dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters wrote a poem about this picture in 1919, entitled On a Drawing by Marc Chagall: Poem 28:
Playing-card eyes fish, head in the window.
Animal head craves the bottle.
At the hoping mouth.
Man without head.
Hand waving sour knives.
Playing-card fish squander dumpling bottle.
And a table drawer.
Silly.
And knob at the table is tenderly round.
Fish presses the table, the stomach in pain from swordstroke.
A drunkard's stem vapidly leers the sorry beast.
The eyes thirst for the scent of the bottle.
Fig. 1, Cover of the avant-garde periodical, Der Sturm, June 1914