''I and the Village'' is a 1911 oil-on-canvas painting by the Belarusian-French artist
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with the School of Paris, École de Paris, as well as several major art movement, artistic styles and created ...
created in 1911. It is exhibited at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
,
New York
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* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
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* ...
.
[Marc Chagall: I and the Village, 1911]
. MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
display caption. Retrieved 4 September 2011.
Description
The work is
Cubist
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture.
Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...
in construction and contains many soft, dreamlike images overlapping one another in a continuous space.
In the foreground, a cap-wearing green-faced man stares at a goat or sheep with the image of a smaller goat being milked on its cheek. In the foreground is a glowing tree held in the man's dark hand. The background features a collection of houses next to an
Orthodox church, and an upside-down female violinist in front of a black-clothed man holding a
scythe
A scythe (, rhyming with ''writhe'') is an agriculture, agricultural hand-tool for mowing grass or Harvest, harvesting Crop, crops. It was historically used to cut down or reaping, reap edible grain, grains before they underwent the process of ...
. The green-faced man wears a necklace with St. Andrew's cross. As the title suggests, ''I and the Village'' is influenced by memories of the artist's place of birth and his relationship to it.
[Barr, Alfred. "Masters of Modern Art". New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954. 133]
The significance of the painting lies in its seamless integration of various elements of Eastern European folktales and culture, both Belarusian and Yiddish. Its clearly defined semiotic
Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of semiosis, sign processes and the communication of Meaning (semiotics), meaning. In semiotics, a Sign (semiotics), sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feel ...
elements (e.g. The Tree of Life) and daringly whimsical style were at the time considered groundbreaking. Its frenetic, fanciful style[Janson, Horst Woldemar. "The story of painting, from cave painting to modern times". H. N. Abrams, 1977.] reshaped by his imagination, without regard to natural color, size or even the laws of gravity.
See also
*
References
Sources
*Charlotte Douglas, Jeannene M. Przyblyski, ''I and the village: early works'', Jewish Community Museum, 1987
*Rosenblum, Robert. ''Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966.
{{DEFAULTSORT:I and the Village
1911 paintings
Paintings by Marc Chagall
Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
Goats in art
Musical instruments in art