Art: Magical Modernist

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be too popular. By the time of his death in 1985, at age 97, Marc Chagall was suburbia's favorite genius. He offered modernism...

Art: Fiddler on the Roof of Modernism: Marc Chagall: 1887-1985

"He grabs a church and paints with the church," wrote a poet of the cubist era, Blaise Cendrars. "He grabs a cow and paints with the cow . . . He paints with an...

Art: A Museum with a Message

The Bible has been a source of inspiration for Marc Chagall ever since he was a boy living in the ghetto of Vitebsk in White Russia. He has drawn dozens of...

Painting: Midsummer Night's Dreamer

(See Cover) In the azure light that angles steeply down the slopes above the French Riviera, a sparkling translucence seizes nature. Rocks seem sodden with...

Opera: Flowery Flute

Artist Marc Chagall believes in "God, Mozart and color." The Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing believes in Mozart, Chagall and boxoffice. Thus, when the Met...

ART: Unrealist

A cosmopolitan crowd of Manhattan art-lovers trampled each other's elegant toes last week to see an exhibit of paintings by Marc Chagall, one of the least...

Art: DONKEYS IN THE SKY

ON the walls of Paris' Maeght Gallery last week, nudes floated over the Champs-Elysees, an ass crouched impaled on the spire of the church of...

Art: The Wanderer

Until recently only three painters rated special rooms in Paris' National Museum of Modern Art. They were Matisse, Braque and Picasso. Last week 60-year-old,...

News Quiz Sep. 3, 2001

1. A ransom note for a stolen Marc Chagall painting demanded: a) $118,000 b) peace in the Middle East c) a face-to-face with Topol d) a date with "total hottie...

Books: The Dialect Of Garlic

It is difficult to read The River Midnight (Scribner; 414 pages; $25), Lilian Nattel's genealogical fantasy of Jewish village life in 19th century Poland,...