By Bridget O’Brien
Contributing Writer

The poet Kim Chon-su once wrote about Marc Chagall’s home village, imagining snow falling on it. Chagall rarely painted winter scenes, usually only in times of great sadness, but he often painted aspects of his village. However, he left in 1920 not knowing he was never to return.

As the Chagall retrospective continues at the Seoul Museum of Art, another generation of poets may be inspired, if the gallery halls filled with school children, teachers, businesspersons, out-of-towners and lovers is any indication of the artist’s popularity here.

What makes Chagall special in Seoul, just as anywhere else in the world, as he exists in fame alongside the most cherished bunch of 20th century modern artists including Picasso, Renoir and Dali, is that his work simply captured color, love and life.

The artist, who was born into the Russian Jewish settlement of Vitebsk (now in Belarus) in 1887 and lived most of his life in France, believed it was his duty as an artist to make people feel joy.

Korean curator of the exhibition is Art Critic Seo Soun-jou, who worked together with France’s Jean Michel Foray in arranging Korea’s show. Seo says he feels more at home speaking French than English, but speaks volumes over Marc Chagall.

As Seo explained, Chagall led a happy life, remaining hopeful despite the wars, revolutions and persecutions in 20th century Europe.

The first two paintings, after the introductory walls of biographical photographs, are ``Over the Town’’ (1914 – 1918) and ``The Couple Above Saint Paul’’ (1968). By allowing a glimpse at a work from when Chagall was first married in Vitebsk, to a work from when the artist was retiring in the village Cote d’Azur next to the Mediterranean, Seo allows an emphasis on the two halves of the artist’s life, with the themes of lovers continuing and the stylistic shift from form to color.

``Lovers, happy lovers, […] may you be always beautiful, always colorful, and always be a new world for each other. And may you replace everything and ignore the rest,’’ Chagall is quoted as saying, recalling the transcendence lovers may feel and as he represented it as they fly or float above the townships.

``Lovers’’ leads the seven themes of the show, followed by Imagination, Paris, Circus, The Bible, Homer’s Odyssey, Chagall and the Mediterranean.

Seo explains Chagall was the first artist to treat the Bible so deeply since the European Renaissance.

With this, Chagall painted the West’s most famous and oldest stories and myths. He included himself in numerous auto portraits as a goat, a horse or a crow, reaching across further with an affinity with animals, and placed a special emphasis on the preservation of the Jewish-Russian folk culture of his home village.

The mural decoration works made for a Jewish theatre in Moscow, hidden for years during the Communist period were discovered in a cupboard in 1985. After five years of restoration, although the color of Chagall’s rich palette had somewhat faded, an interesting subtle commentary on the movement of art in Russia at the time was revealed. Russia was struck by the crucial value of Chagall, Soe explained, saying, ``In 1995 after the restoration of these works, Chagall was reconsidered as a powerful artistic force to their modern period.’’

Chagall argued against what were the initial stages of abstraction in the 20th century, the Suprematism spearheaded by his former colleague, Malevich at Chagall’s own Vitebsk Art School. These were vital times while Chagall stubbornly aimed at keeping the folk culture, just as the performer, the dancer, and fiddler of humbler origins stay central the life of the town over subsequent generations.

Painting of life, the circus, the clown and the lover, Chagall managed to stay besotted by the magic of life, hopeful in the midst of tragedy, and to remember the value of traditional storytellers above a modern glut of smart ideologies.

Organized by the Seoul Museum of Art with the Hankook Ilbo, the retrospective of Marc Chagall, with its display of a total of 120 oil paintings, gouaches, drawings and panel works, continues until Oct. 15. The exhibition will travel to Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, where it will run from Nov. 13 through Jan. 16 next year.

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