Marc Chagall

"I came to Palestine to examine certain ideas, and I came without a camera, without even a brush. No documentation, no tourist impressions, and nevertheless I am glad to have been there. From far and wide they pour towards the Wailing Wall, bearded Jews in yellow, blue and red robes and with fur caps. Nowhere else do you see so much despair and so much joy; nowhere else are you so shaken and yet so happy as at the sight of this thousand-year-old heap of stones and dust in Jerusalem, in Sefad, in the hills where prophets upon prophets lie buried." -Marc Chagall

"If in some painting I have cut off the head of a cow and replaced it upside down or have sometimes even painted the whole picture topsy-turvy, the reason was not that I wanted to create literature. I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension. An example: a street. Matisse constructs it in the spirit of Cezanne. Picasso in that of Negroes or Egyptians. I go about it differently. 1 have my street. In that street 1 place a corpse. The corpse causes psychic confusion in the street. I put a musician on a rooftop. The presence of the musician interacts with that of the corpse. Then a man sweeping the street. The image of the street-sweeper affects that of the musician. A bouquet of flowers failing down, and so forth. In this way I admit a psychic fourth dimension into pictorial representation and the two are mingled." -Marc Chagall

"I lived and worked in America during a period of global tragedy that hit people everywhere. As the years passed by, 1 did not grow any younger. But in the atmosphere of hospitable welcome I was able to draw strength. Without denying the roots of my art." -Marc Chagall

"If ever there was a moral crisis it was that of paint, matter, blood, and all their constituents, the words and the tones, all the things one makes a work of art out of. just as one makes a life. For even if you cover a canvas with thick masses of paint, irrespective of whether the outlines of shapes can be made out or not, and even if you enlist the help of words and tones, it does not necessarily follow that an authentic work of art will have been created." -Marc Chagall

"What counts is art. painting, a kind of painting that is quite different from what everyone makes it out to be. But what kind? Will God or someone else give me the strength to breathe the breath of prayer and mourning into my paintings, the breath of prayer for redemption and resurrection?" -Marc Chagall

“When Chagall paints you do not know if he is asleep or awake. Somewhere or other inside his head there must be an angel.” –Pablo Picasso