Au cirque

‘For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing, it is profound... It is a magic world, circus is a timeless game where tears and smiles, the play of the arms and legs take the form of great art’
MARC CHAGALL

‘It is in the circus that eccentricity and simplicity blend most naturally’
MARC CHAGALL

Filled with an array of rich, bright colours and an exuberant, frenetic energy, Marc Chagall’s Au cirque captures the chaos, the spectacle, the intense sensory stimulation, of the circus. Viewed from the audience who encircle the circus ring, Chagall focuses on the cast of characters which traditionally joined in the performance – from acrobats to musicians, clowns to animal performers, he evokes the excitement and atmosphere of this popular entertainment. Created on an intimate scale, which makes the pigments all the more jewel-like in their intensity, this composition is filled with an iridescent, kaleidoscopic play of colour, imbuing the scene with an emphatically joyful air.

The circus became one of Chagall’s favourite subjects during his early years in Paris, and remained so throughout his career. His experience and memory of clowns, acrobats and young ladies on horseback lay at the heart of his personal mythology. He joined a long and distinguished line of Impressionist and modern painters who featured the circus in their work, including Degas, Seurat, Toulouse- Lautrec, Picasso, Rouault, Van Dongen and Léger. In 1927, as Chagall was finishing his series of one hundred gouaches based on the fables of La Fontaine, the dealer Ambroise Vollard, sponsor of this project, suggested that the artist undertake a second group of pictures, based this time on the theme of the circus. Chagall painted a suite of gouaches, Le cirque Vollard, many of which were based on sketches that he drew while enjoying the spectacle of the Paris Cirque d’Hiver from Vollard’s reserved box seats. He often brought his young daughter, Ida, with him to see the performances, although Sidney Alexander has noted that ‘Marc was as childishly delighted with it as Ida’ (Alexander, Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 292). The sheer exhilaration which radiates from Chagall’s cirque Vollard paintings offers a glimpse into the joy the artist felt as he sat amongst the crowds, absorbing the spectacle of the performance, while the effervescence of their colours stand as a counterpoint to the sombre clowns and circus queens of Georges Rouault’s suite of illustrations, also commissioned by Vollard. The variety of the characters and their performing roles in these works would provide Chagall with a series of motifs to which he returned on many subsequent occasions.

Painted nearly five decades after his experiences in Paris, Au cirque demonstrates the enduring fascination Chagall felt for this magical world of colour, energy and theatrics. ‘These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have made themselves at home in my visions,’ he explained. ‘Why? Why am I so touched by their make-up and their grimaces? With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colours and make-up, I dream of painting new psychic distortions.’ (Chagall, quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, (ed.) J. Baal-Teshuva, Westport, 1995, p. 195). In the centre of the ring a young girl with a small bow in her hair daringly perches atop a blue horse, her elegant form standing tall as she balances, unaided, on its bare back. Amidst the frenzied activity of the rest of the performance, her form stands unerringly still, perfectly poised, the centre of a whorl of colour and movement. The stance of the clown, and the presence of the bouquet of flowers in his hand, suggests that he is inviting the crowd to applaud the young girl as her performance reaches its end. In 1968, the poet Louis Aragon noted that ‘In the Chagallian circuses, what indeed makes them incomparable, is that we are caught up in the movement of the woman circling the ring, she whose beauty is the beauty of danger’ (Aragon, quoted in ibid, p. 196). For Chagall, the bareback riders embodied an ethereal beauty, becoming mysterious, enigmatic characters who represented the magical, impenetrable world of the circus.