Chagall and Jesus

Divine Muse

A Jewish artist haunted by the face of Jesus.


BY JONATHAN WILSON
Friday, April 27, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Last month I gave a talk on Marc Chagall in Seattle. A large part of what I had to say was devoted to the artist's ambivalence about his Jewishness and his obsession with the image of Jesus. Afterward, a few members of the audience approached me. The topic of Chagall usually elicits a strong Jewish response--reproductions of his works are ubiquitous in Jewish homes, images that seem to evoke shtetl life. But these people were members of an unusual local Christian congregation who referred to Jesus as Yeshua and who blew the shofar whenever a new family joined their church. They gave me an illustration that merged Jewish and Christian iconography. An explanation on the back presented some surprising symbology. The Torah scrolls were said to represent Jesus.

Chagall (1887-1985), with his own mixing and merging, clearly held a special interest for the group, as indeed they might have had for him. After all, the emblematic Jewish painter of the 20th century had insisted that the museum built to house his paintings in Nice, France, be called The National Museum of the Marc Chagall Biblical Message: not exactly an art gallery or a house of worship but a place committed to a universalist and utopian religious philosophy and aesthetic, and one designed to transcend the borders of any particular religion.

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Two minute Marc Chagall biography