022 I And The Village022 Ik en het dorp022 Ich und das Dorf

Marc Chagall
(I and the village)
*1887 Vitebsk – †1985 Saint-Pall-de-Vence
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1911

This is already the third sheep in this 2000 Masterpiece serie, I hope that I didn’t cause the MKZ-virus in Europe. The first sheep was an Appel, the second was a Beuys and this one is a Chagall. Chagall always made flying goats and cows or weightless hovering lovers over the roofs of his hometown Vitebsk in Russia representing characteristically vivid recollections of Russian-Jewish village scenes. The painting shows a farmer who gives the sheep a bough with flowers. In the middle you see a walking man and a hanging woman below six houses. The color he used is derived partly from Russian expressionism and decisively by French cubism. Beside paintings he made also many prints, theater sets and costumes, murals, and stained-glass windows.

I like the painting because he explore the realm between dream and reality. Chagall looks with simple frankness at the miracles that crop up ever and again in the daily life of the real world. Over Chagall’s world lies a magic spell, an enchatment poetic and fantastic and warm coloured human sentiment. 

Hans Arp
*1886 Strassburg – †1966 Basel
Centre Georges Pompidou, Parijs, 1925

French painter, sculpture and poet who is called in the bilingual Elzas (French and German), both Hans as Jean. Hans Arp founded together with Hugo Ball en Tristan Tzara the Dada movement in Zurich. Few years later he founded with Max Ernst the Koln dada movement. In 1922 he moved to Paris, were he became member of the Paris Surrealistic Group (around Breton).

Maybe even more famous than his paitings and sculptures are his poets. In those poets he experiments with chances by cutting sentences after which he throws it on the ground and just watch what happened. He also used this method by making this artwork by ordening the wood on chance with as result that the work become strongly multi-shaped.