Marc Chagall

Through July 10, $8, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Perelman Building, 2525 Pennsylvania Ave., 215-763-8100, philamuseum.org.

by Julia Askenase

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Published: Mar 2, 2011

[ visual art ]

It's safe to say the exhilarating colors and whimsical reveries of Marc Chagall's modern-folkloric art stand perfectly well on their own. But Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Michael Taylor's spring exhibit places the Russian-born artist alongside his coterie of Eastern European émigrés, many of whom shared this pivotal Parisian moment under one roof. "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle" focuses on the artists who populated the three-story Montparnasse live-work space, La Ruche ("the beehive"), which became a breeding ground for modern immigrant art in a then-religiously tolerant Paris. "I think you would have to fast-forward to the 1960s to find a similar communal atmosphere," says Taylor, whose show features some 70 paintings and sculptures from Chagall and peers like Amedeo Modigliani, Jacques Lipchitz and Chaim Soutine. Most prominent on display, though, is the hybrid nature of Chagall's early work. "Even when he's in Paris, he's really painting his hometown," says Taylor. "While everyone else was painting landscapes and still lifes, he was painting scenes of Jewish life that was rapidly disappearing, but also updating it with Cubism and other trends in modern art."

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