Editing Marc Chagall (section)

==Early life and education==

===Early life===
[[File:ВІЦЕБСК. Музей Марка Шагала - VICIEBSK. Marc Chagall Museum..jpg|thumb|Marc Chagall's childhood home in [[Vitebsk]], Belarus. Currently site of the [[Marc Chagall Museum]].]]
[[File:Chagall parents.jpg|thumb|{{center|Marc Chagall, 1912, ''The Spoonful of Milk (La Cuillerée de lait)'', gouache on paper}}]]

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal in 1887, into a Jewish family in [[Liozna]],<ref name="Harshav1"/> near the city of [[Vitebsk]], Belarus, then part of the [[Russian Empire]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXI6K9vPLfkC&q=chagall+june+1887+julian&pg=PA65 |title=Binyāmîn Haršav, Marc Chagall, Barbara Harshav Marc Chagall and his times: a documentary narrative |isbn=9780804742146 |access-date=15 March 2012|last1=Harshav |first1=Benjamin |last2=Chagall |first2=Marc |last3=Harshav |first3=Barbara |year=2004 |publisher=Stanford University Press }}</ref> At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000. Half of the population was Jewish.<ref name=Lewis/> A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian [[Toledo, Spain|Toledo]]" by artist [[Ilya Repin]], after the cosmopolitan city of the former [[Spanish Empire]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/books/chapters/chapter-chagall.html |title='Chagall' |newspaper=The New York Times |date=27 November 2008 |last1=Wullschlager |first1=Jackie |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Because the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.

Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name [[Segal]], which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a [[Levite|Levitic]] family.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://segal.org/name/index.html |title=Segal.org |publisher=Segal.org |date=22 May 2005 |access-date=15 March 2012}}</ref> His father, Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels, earning 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire was 13 roubles a month). Chagall wrote of those early years:

{{quote|Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the [[samovar]], drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot... There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.<ref name=Chagall>Chagall, Marc. ''My Life'', Orion Press (1960)</ref>}}

One of the main sources of income for the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout the Russian Empire. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.<ref name=Teshuva>Baal-Teshuva, Jacob. ''Marc Chagall'', Taschen (1998, 2008)</ref> From the late 18th century to the First World War, the Imperial Russian government confined Jews to living within the [[Pale of Settlement]], which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, almost exactly corresponding to the territory of the [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth|Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]] which was taken over by Imperial Russia in the late 18th century. That led to the creation of Jewish market-villages ([[shtetl]]s) throughout today's Eastern Europe, with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community institutions.<ref name=Goodman/>{{rp|14}}

Chagall wrote as a boy; "I felt at every step that I was a Jew—people made me feel it".<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mTadBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA69 | first=Stanley | last=Meisler | title=Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse | publisher=St. Martin's Press | date=14 April 2015 | page=69 | isbn=978-1466879270}}</ref>{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}} During a [[pogrom]], Chagall wrote that: "The street lamps are out. I feel panicky, especially in front of butchers' windows. There you can see calves that are still alive lying beside the butchers' hatchets and knives".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}}<ref name="Chagall, Abbott">{{Cite book|url=http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.75007|title=Marc Chagall My Life|first=Marc|last=Chagall|translator-first=Elizabeth|translator-last=Abbott|date=1960|publisher=The Orion Press|location=New York}}</ref> When asked by some ''pogromniks'' "Jew or not?", Chagall remembered thinking: "My pockets are empty, my fingers sensitive, my legs weak and they are out for blood. My death would be futile. I so wanted to live".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}}<ref name="Chagall, Abbott" /> Chagall denied being a Jew, leading the ''pogromniks'' to shout "All right! Get along!"{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}}<ref name="Chagall, Abbott" />

Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, ''My Life''. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Chagall related how he realised that the Jewish traditions in which he had grown up were fast disappearing and that he needed to document them. From the 1730s, Vitebsk itself had been a centre of that culture, with its teachings derived from the [[Kabbalah]]. Chagall scholar, Susan Tumarkin Goodman, describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:

{{quote|Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society ... Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant [[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidic]] Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.<ref name=Goodman>Goodman, Susan Tumarkin. ''Marc Chagall: Early Works From Russian Collections'', Third Millennium Publ. (2001)</ref>{{rp|14}}}}

===Art education===
[[File:Yury Pen - Portrait of Marc Chagall.jpg|thumb|left|Portrait of Chagall by [[Yehuda Pen]], his first art teacher in [[Vitebsk]]]]

In the Russian Empire at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular schools and universities imposed a [[Jewish quota|quota on Jews]]. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enrol him in a regular high school, and he recalled: "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.<ref name=Chagall/>

A turning point of his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that, for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". Chagall would later say that there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.<ref name=Teshuva/>

Goodman writes that Chagall eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not yet understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical". The young Chagall explained: "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of [[Yehuda Pen|Yehuda (Yuri) Pen]], a realist artist who operated a drawing school in Vitebsk. At the same time, future artists [[El Lissitzky]] and [[Ossip Zadkine]] were also Pen's students. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit him.<ref name=Teshuva/>

===Artistic inspiration===
[[File:Marc Chagall, 1912, Calvary (Golgotha) Christus gewidmet, oil on canvas, 174.6 x 192.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg|thumb|upright=1.05|Marc Chagall, 1912, ''Calvary ([[Calvary|Golgotha]])'', oil on canvas, 174.6 × 192.4&nbsp;cm, [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York. Alternative titles: ''Kreuzigung Bild 2 Christus gewidmet [Golgotha. Crucifixion. Dedicated to Christ]''. Sold through Galerie [[Der Sturm]] (Herwarth Walden), Berlin to Bernhard Koehler (1849–1927), Berlin, 1913. Exhibited: [[Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon]], Berlin, 1913]]

Goodman notes that during that period in Imperial Russia, Jews had two ways to join the art world: one was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots", the other—the one that Chagall chose—was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into art. For Chagall, that was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle".<ref name=Goodman/>{{rp|14}}

Chagall biographer, Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art".<ref name=Meyer>Meyer, Franz. ''Marc Chagall, L'œuvre gravé'', Paris (1957)</ref> Lewis adds: "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers... [with] scenes of childhood so indelibly in one's mind and to invest them with an emotional charge so intense that it could only be discharged obliquely through an obsessive repetition of the same cryptic symbols and ideograms... "<ref name=Lewis/>

Years later, at the age of 57, while living in the United States, Chagall confirmed that when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":

<blockquote>Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? ... You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city—in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. ...You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying', he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." ... I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.<ref name=Harshav/></blockquote>