My Life (Penguin Modern Classics)

Live for a few hours inside one of the most human and least pretentious of painters.Chagall wrote this memoir when he was aged 35 and about to leave Russia/USSR for the second and last time. It was 1922 and he knew in his bones that he would never see his intensely Jewish home-town again, having experienced the chaotic violence and freedom of the early years after the Russian Revolution.His fizzing, short phrases are poetic, concerned with visual and sensual memory, and with the emotion that made him what he was, especially regarding his family in Vitebsk.His way with language is suggestive, disjointed, immediate. It is certainly not whimsical, as some have written, but stream-of-consciousness experiential. There are facts and short, insightful vignettes, but above all it is the tone of the man which comes through: his driven, utterly personal, instinctive, artistic nature.The words correspond with Chagall's paintings: powerfully suggestive, unrealistically figurative, filled with light and colour, movement, and sensual spirituality.For an excellent biography of Chagall, read Marc Chagall, by Jonathan Wilson (2007), giving a more historical and Jewish painter than the ethereal figure of conventional wisdom.

I love Marc Chagall - in his writing and in his art. His words paint pictures and his paintings tell stories - they tell us our dreams. On the back cover there is a good quote but it also calls him a folk artist - maybe in part - but not all folk artists are known for being great world artists. I hope I meet him one day!

Who knew Marc Chagall was a wonderful writer as well as a superlative painter? Well, I didn't - until I read this fabulous book. If you like his pictorial style, his literary style will surely win you over.

Really liked this book, my dad introduced me too him as his art is very much like his. The writing style is slightly unusual (in a good way),, definitely better than most biographies - if you have a fan of Chagall in your life of if you just want to learn a little something, buy this! :^)

I couldn't finish reading it even though it's a small book. I think it was not engaging. Somehow, the way his life is described is not made in the most engaging way, with interesting details left out.

I liked the way is written, I much with my ideal of the artits and his paintings. Very interesting to have a direct witness of the way of jews in East Europe at the beginning of XX century.

Interesting to read Chagall and to know more about his life - being a Jew in Russia - but also to learn more of who he is - a contemporary to Malewich and Kandinskij - the futurists - but he does it his way.

As a huge Chagall fan this was a Mustbuy for a long time.I have started reading it and am hooked already. Chagall writes as he paints. Honest, colourful and moving. I love the book already.