Marc CHAGALL (1887-1985)
La branche (The Branch)
1956-62
Oil on canvas
150.1X120.0cm
Gift of the Cultural Foundation of Okada
"I do not like nihilism. Human existence is certainly dark and full of sorrow, but through love, art transforms sorrow into joy, just like Giotto does in his paintings or Mozart in his music." This is how Chagall described his artwork one day in his room in Paris, the city that had become his second home. By coincidence, the year was 1956, the same year he created La branche and Le cirque (The Circus).
In La branche, one finds an array of motifs familiar from Chagall's other artwork. One sees floating lovers, blooming flowers, and the Eiffel Tower, which evokes an air of nostalgic remembrance. These motifs lead one to think of this painting as a variation on works like Les meries de la tour Eiffel, (The Couple of the Eiffel Tower, 1938-39), which also features these motifs. The title La branche also recalls his L'arbre de la vie (Tree of Life, 1948). La branche also shows a bride and groom floating into the air in front of an enormous tree, but the dominant sentiment is bereavement for his recently deceased wife. In this painting, one finds Chagall's thoughts of death and an earnest prayer for rebirth. When after many years an artist returns to a theme he has treated in the past, the work is inevitably shaped by the road he has traversed during the meantime.
The same year Chagall took Valentina as his second wife, he visited the large cathedral in Chartres and was profoundly moved by the splendid sight of its famous stained glass windows. After much study, he produced his own stained glass windows for a cathedral built in Assy, Haute-Savoie in 1957. The transparent blue of La branche, which resembles the color of a deep pool of water, served as a compass that gave the artist the confidence to move forward in this new direction during his sixties.