From Publishers Weekly
Calling Marc Chagall the greatest image-maker of this century, Andre Malraux, in one of the selections in this gorgeously illustrated anthology, probes the Russian-born artist's ``inner dialogue with himself.'' French art critic Alain Jouffroy explores ``the omnipotence of the Chagallian dream'' mingling ``love, reality, society, poetry, revolution, the circus'' into a seamless universe where fantasy, reality and illusion coexist. Baal-Teshuva, a critic, curator and friend of Chagall from 1951 until the artist's death in 1985, splices Chagall's letters, reminiscences and lectures and excerpts from his autobiography, My Life; essays by critics John Russell, Emily Genauer, Katharine Kuh; reminiscences by poets Osip Mandelstam, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Guillaume Apollinaire, Edouard Roditi; and recollections by friends and family including Chagall's first wife, Bella Rosenfeld, and Virginia Haggard McNeil, his companion for seven years, with whom he had a son, David McNeil. The result is a unique, multifaceted portrait of Chagall's love affair with life, art and the world.
Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In spite of its subtitle, this handsome, oversized book is not an exhibition catalog, but rather one of a series of "retrospectives" produced by the publisher-which includes studies on Monet, Matisse, and Gauguin. The volume anthologizes previously published writings by critics, colleagues, family, and the artists themselves. Chronicles of Chagall's personal and artistic development are supplemented with a bibliographical index (but no true bibliography) and ample, albeit murky, illustrations. Editor Baal-Teshuva, a critic, curator, and friend of Chagall's, provides in his introduction a framework for the book, which is organized thematically, geographically, and by the diverse media of Chagall's prodigious output. Franz Meyer's more exhaustive and scholarly monograph Marc Chagall (LJ 5/15/64. o.p.) and Susan Compton's Chagall (LJ 6/1/85. o.p.) which includes a bibliography and better quality reproductions, are recommended over this latest tome as single sources on the artist. For its amassing of writings from a wide variety of sources, however, this book would still be a valuable acquisition for any art library needing multiple sources.
Heidi Martin Winston, NYPLCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
