Chagall & the French Catholic Revival

I've posted before on the (generally unacknowledged) effect that the French Catholic Revival had on the development of Modern Art. More evidence of this influence can be found in Jackie Wullschlager's excellent biography of Marc Chagall, Chagall: Love & Exile.

There we find that, through the collection of the Morozov family, Maurice Denis was viewed by Leon Bakst, Chagall's art tutor in St Petersburg, as being one of the artists of the future. As a result, Chagall was taught "to simplify form, enhance colour and liberate brushwork."

On his arrival in Paris, Chagall was swept up by the throng that crowded the cubist room of the spring 1911 salon. He reflected later that it was there that he came to believe too much in Albert Gleizes, seeing in him "a sort of Courbet of cubism."

Later, in the 1930s, Chagall became part of the circle around the Catholic philosophers Jacques and Raissa Maritain. The Chagalls were regular attendants at the Maritain's "weekly Sunday gathering in Meuden, where the agenda was how to return secular France to spiritual awareness." The Maritains "made their home ... a centre of spiritual enlightenment for Paris's disillusioned writers and artists such as Rouault and Max Jacob." "Thanks to them, many converted or rediscovered their Catholic origins, most noisily Jean Cocteau."

Later still, Chagall was wooed by Father Marie-Alain Couturier who "wanted him to decorate the baptistry for his modern church, Notre Dame de Toute Grâce, on the Plateau D'Assy in Haute Savoie." "Thanks to Couturier's enlightened vision of modernist religious artists ... the church already had work by half a dozen artists who were Communists, Jews, atheists, or all three, as well as a dark stained glass window by the devout Catholic Rouault." Chagall eventually accepted the commission but did not complete the work until after Couturier's death. Following Couturier's approach Chagall returned to religious paintings and this in turn led on to his "more public art of stained glass windows and murals."

I list these contacts not to suggest in any way that Chagall was or became a Catholic artist but simply to demonstrate again the extent to which those artists, philosophers and monks who were a part of the French Catholic Revival had a significant influence on visual artists throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The extent to which this was the case has not been fully recognised and its detailed examination would form an interesting study or exhibition.

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Tracy Chapman - All That You Have Is Your Soul.