Foray, Jean-Michel et al. — Marc Chagall

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art / Abrams, 2003. Hardcover. Blue cloth with color illustrated glossy dustjacket. 236 pp. 82 bw and 155 color plates. A beautifully designed, full-scale survey, Marc Chagall features some 140 paintings and works on paper in lush color reproductions. An essay by Jean-Michel Foray contextualizes the work, while an illustrated chronology of Chagall’s life details the many stages of the artist’s career. Marc Chagall is one of the twentieth century's favorite artists, known and admired for his rich palette, his inventive approach, his accessible subjects, and the rich traditions behind his work. Combining fantasy, spirituality, and nostalgia with a distinctive modern painting style, Chagall's canvases are infused with a joyous, dreamlike simplicity. Even as styles shifted from Cubism to Suprematism to Surrealism, his work remained individual and idiosyncratic-sometimes harming his art world reputation, but never his popular appeal. Lavishly illustrated with more than one hundred and fifty color reproductions, Marc Chagall is the first full-scale survey of the artist's work in nearly twenty years. An introductory essay by exhibition curator Jean-Michel Foray contextualizes the Russian-born artist's work, while a heavily illustrated chronology of Chagall's life assembled by Meret Meyer Graber and Jakov Bruk details the many stages of his career. The work is organized into four sections, each with an introduction by Foray, to help make sense of the artist's prodigious oeuvre. This catalogue is published on the occasion of a major retrospective conceived by Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris, with the Musee National Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Nice, and co-organized with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As New .