The Wedding

French Impressionists revelled in the musical nightlife of Parisian cafe society. Degas painted The Song of the Dog in 1876 while artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, and Seurat sought to bring the sometimes raucous sounds of the music hall to their work. Degas' work, however, is often as much about capturing the noisy, smoky, slightly degenerate look and feel of such musical venues as in the music itself. But it was only as painters began to move beyond genre into the art of Expressionism that music and painting were finally able to merge. Marc Chagall's late work, The Wedding, dating from 1961, is one such piece. In it he manages to fuse the bride and groom in his Jewish wedding scene into one entity. The groom is seen upside down (head over heels in love?). Likewise, he also merges the cello and the cello player. It's as if the instrument is playing itself. Indeed, unlike the all but hidden musicians in Watteau's work, Chagall's music makers occupy at least half the canvas while at the same time he employs strident reds and oranges amid the otherwise dull trappings of the wedding experience to draw attention to the most dominant sounds. One can almost hear the music.

http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=a&a=i&ID=1127

Jacquie