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Art,
theatre, fascism, and revolution make for a heady mix. All
these elements come together in a fascinating new show at the
Jewish Museum, Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish
Theatre, 1919-1949.
In
the initial excitement and cultural upheaval that followed the
Bolshevik Revolution, Jewish culture experienced a new
flowering. Finally able to
give public reign to their creative forces, Jews in Russia made
impressive cultural contributions.
The
two main Jewish theatres in Russia represented opposing impulses,
both in art and politics: one accomodationist and socialist, the
other nationalist and revolutionary. Language played a
fascinating role in this development as well, reflecting the
theatres' respective political leanings: Goset (The Moscow State
Yiddish Theatre) performed in Yiddish, while Habima, founded in
1918 by Nahum Zemach, presented in Hebrew. Goset, led by
Solomon Mikhoels, viewed Jewish culture as being perfectly at home
in the Soviet Union. In public speeches, Mikhoels implored
Jewish mothers to send their children to the Soviet army that was
fighting fascism in the 1940's. While the new Soviet
government initially encouraged Jewish creativity, it soon turned
on its national minorities. Anti-Semitism rose along with
Stalin's increasing paranoia. Mikhoel's loyalty was repaid
in typical Soviet fashion: he was brutally murdered in 1948 by
Stalin's Secret Police. Habima, influenced by Zionism and
other expressions of Jewish nationalism, took a different
tack. Its leaders, anticipating the way things were going,
never returned from a foreign tour and settled in Palestine, where
the theatre eventually morphed into the National Theatre of
Israel.
The
show at the Jewish Museum concentrates on the sets, paintings,
costumes, and posters produced by artists such as Natan Altman,
Ignaty Nivinsky, and Marc Chagall. The theatres were
avant-garde in their tastes, and used modern artists, designers,
and directors to create shows, costumes and sets where Cubism,
Futurism and Constructivism were introduced. Many of these
set constructions disappeared in the 1930's only to be
rediscovered in the late 1990's. The centerpiece of the
exhibit is Chagall's huge mural, Introduction to the Jewish
Theatre. The humor-filled creation is a who's who of
Jewish artists of the time: a smiling Chagall is held aloft in a
colleague's arms, limbs are foreshortened to comic effect,
musicians and dancers abound. Some of Chagall's unique
contributions here include his quasi-fauvist use of color and the
remarkably naturalistic transposition of traditional Jewish
themes, as well as his characteristic sense of whimsy: an
upside-down man, a green cow that represented antirealist
revolutionary art. The mural echoes the monumental scale of
the two masterpieces that hang at the Metropolitan Opera.
Chagall's
students copied the green cow and hung representations all over
town. The Communist party did not like it: "Why is the
cow green? What has that to do with Marx and
Lenin," they asked. Chagall's brilliant,
saturated green was a color he often used as a challenge to
realism - his face is green in the self-portrait I and the
Village, and so is the face of the violinist in Music.
See:
Chagall
and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theatre, 1919-1949, Jewish
Museum, through March 22, 2009
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