The Jerusalem Windows

New York, NY: George Braziller, 1967. First Revised Edition. Hardcover. Good. Marc Chagall. xix, [1], 111, [11] pages. Note on fep. Includes Introduction, as well as the dimensions of the preparatory drawings, The Stained-Glass Windows, and the Details. Some scuffing and wear to cover and corners. Minor spine weakness at third color plate, restrengthened with glue. Each of the twelve stained-glass windows reproduced is preceded by a preparatory set of drawings and models, whose number, media, dimension, and order of presentation are exactly the same in the sequence of each Tribe and are arranged as follows: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Height Width First sketch, pencil pen and India ink........................................................7-7/8'' X 5-7/8'', Preparatory drawing, India ink and wash....................................................15-7/7-8" X 11 -5/8" First color skitch, India ink and watercolor..................................................7-7/8'' X 5-7/8", Small model, gouache and collage.............................................................8-5/8'' X 18-7/8" Final model, gouache and collage.............................................................16-1/2'' X 12-1/2" Marc Chagall[a] (born Moïche Zakharovitch Chagalov;[7] 6 July 1887 - 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic tapestries and fine art prints. Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall saw his work as "not the dream of one people but of all humanity"). For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's pre-eminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN and the Art Institute of Chicago and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra. He had two basic reputations: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism". Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk." In 1960, he began creating stained glass windows for the synagogue of Hebrew University's Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Leymarie writes that "in order to illuminate the synagogue both spiritually and physically", it was decided that the twelve windows, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, were to be filled with stained glass. Chagall envisaged the synagogue as "a crown offered to the Jewish Queen", and the windows as "jewels of translucent fire", she writes. Chagall then devoted the next two years to the task, and upon completion in 1961 the windows were exhibited in Paris and then the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They were installed permanently in Jerusalem in February 1962. Each of the twelve windows is approximately 11 feet high and 8 feet (2.4 m) wide, much larger than anything he had done before. Cogniat considers them to be "his greatest work in the field of stained glass". In 1973 Israel released a 12-stamp set with images of the stained-glass windows. The windows symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel who were blessed by Jacob and Moses in the verses which conclude Genesis and Deuteronomy. In those books, notes Leymarie, "The dying Moses repeated Jacob's solemn act and, in a somewhat different order, also blessed the twelve tribes of Israel who were about to enter the land of Canaan... In the synagogue, where the windows are distributed in the same way, the tribes form a symbolic guard of honor around the tabernacle." Leymarie describes the physical and spiritual significance of the windows: The essence of the Jerusalem Windows lies in color, in Chagall's magical ability to animate material and transform it into light. Words do not have the power to describe Chagall's color, its spirituality, its singing quality, its dazzling luminosity, its ever more subtle flow, and its sensitivity to the inflections of the soul and the transports of the imagination. It is simultaneously jewel-hard and foamy, reverberating and penetrating, radiating light from an unknown interior. At the dedication ceremony in 1962, Chagall described his feelings about the windows: For me a stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world. Stained glass has to be serious and passionate. It is something elevating and exhilarating. It has to live through the perception of light. To read the Bible is to perceive a certain light, and the window has to make this obvious through its simplicity and grace... The thoughts have nested in me for many years, since the time when my feet walked on the Holy Land, when I prepared myself to create engravings of the Bible. They strengthened me and encouraged me to bring my modest gift to the Jewish people-that people that lived here thousands of years ago, among the other Semitic peoples.