Published: 30 May 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
STEVE MEACHAM previews a flagship Jewish Museum exhibition, which includes a contemporary companion exhibition by Yvette Coppersmith.
Most people associate the great Jewish artist Marc Chagall with his paintings, laden with folkloric and Biblical references.
But a new exhibition at Melbourne’s Jewish Museum of Australia explores other aspects of Chagall’s extraordinarily varied range of cultural talents: poetry, printmaking, stained glass windows and the massive 12 panel ceiling canvases at the Paris Opera House he was commissioned to paint by André Malraux in 1960.
The new exhibition is “a symbolic nod” to the museum’s first large-scale show in 1995, directed by the late Dr Helen Light AM, which paid homage to Chagall.
It also features a contemporary response with a companion exhibition by an Archibald-Prize-winning Melbourne Jewish artist.
CHAGALL, the exhibition, has been curated by art historian Jade Niklai in collaboration with Anna Tregloan, the exhibition designer.
Clearly, the large-scale public works - the stained glass, the murals, the tapestries - can’t be removed from their permanent surroundings. They can be viewed in situ at many synagogues and churches around Europe, at the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), the United Nations building in Manhattan and Hadassah Hebrew University Abbel Synagogue in Jerusalem.
So how did the team manage to create a space that includes works it can’t put on the walls and tell the story of Chagall’s life “in a poignant and dramatic way”?
Niklai is reluctant to give away secrets of the show. She says works will be interpreted via light shows and other “activations which bring the artworks to life”.
Also expect to find examples of Chagall’s love of poetry: he once said he preferred the company of poets to the company of painters. Not only was Chagall a published poet, he also relished providing illustrations for other poets and authors, many of which are on display for the first time in Australia.
