Chagall – love and fantasy

I loved drawing ever since I was a kid. I created my first more serious work of art that didn’t consist of randomly sketched concentric circles and made me very proud of myself when I was 5 years old. One summer afternoon, I took a white paper and a pencil and this is how I drew a goat in nature. On her left side, there is a flying butterfly bigger than the sun that smiles from the right corner of the paper. I remember being thrilled with my goat who looked like an amateur mix of Picasso and Dali. My mom was fascinated as well – the drawing is still part of our art collection in our corridor. 

Little did I know that one of the most important symbols in works of art of March Shagal, the artist who later came to be one of my favorites, is precisely a goat. 
Two and a half months ago, just a few days after my arrival in Milan, I heard that Chagall's works would be exhibited in the Mudec gallery from the 16th of March onwards. I was anxiously waiting for the first wave of crowds to clear up so that I could enjoy the exhibition in peace (although it is never peaceful in Milan) and get to know Chagall more intimately. 

Little did I know that one of the most important symbols in works of art of March Shagal, the artist who later came to be one of my favorites, is precisely a goat. 

The exhibition space was in blue, green, and red – recurring colors in Chagall's work. While you are passing from one room to another, chronologically following his artistic and personal development, the background is filled with silent notes of Nach Aktion, a song from the movie Schindler’s list. Family portraits and scenes, religious elements, Jewish suffering in the Second world war, and his wife Bella who was an inspiration for many of his works are just some of the main themes that make Chagall's work memorable and recognizable. It is useless to describe the whole exhibition and each painting, but what is worth describing is the feeling Chagall left on me  – love. Love that doesn’t recognize war, famine, poverty. Love that is above anything else, and flies above the destroyed city, love that floats next to the goat playing violin because only love can do such a thing. Love for human beings and nature as the omnipresent motif and guidance in life. Cliche, you might say, but you cannot escape its truth. Very few artists can actually impart such a pure and ingenuine thought about love and happiness and this is where Shagall’s geniality lies. As Anna Scot (Julia Roberts) says in the movie Notting Hill: It feels like how love should be. Happiness isn’t happiness without a violin-playing goat. 

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