Marc Chagall, Born 1889 (Classic Reprint)

For people who argue that Chagall's painting derives from icons and Russian folk art, this painting might serve as Exhibit A. The woman, from the way she is delineated and the way she is placed in the picture, immediately brings to mind the treatment of the Virgin in many Byzantine icons. At the same time the flowers on her skirt suggest peasant decorations. The idea of being able to see the child within the mother's body is also one that can be found in the primitive art of earlier periods, and, in fact, in many icons. To present day gallery-goers it will recall similar idioms in the hollowed-out figures of such younger men than Chagall as Salvador Dali and Henry Moore. At any rate, it is fancies like this X-ray view of the baby, as well as the head looming over the houses in the lower right and the goat sailing over the clouds, that has caused Chagall to be sometimes clas sified as a Surrealist. There are, however, still strong evidences of Cubist influences in this Paris painting - for example, the breaking up of the space surrounding the central figure with geometric shapes.

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