On display at The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester until Sunday 12 February, A Farewell to Art: Chagall, Shakespeare and Prospero, a touring show from the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London, and showcasing a rare, limited-edition portfolio by modernist artist, Marc Chagall.
The exhibition has been delighting visitors since its opening and features 50 illustrations created to reflect Chagall’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s magical play, The Tempest. This edition of the play was published by Éditions André Sauret, under the supervision of Charles Sorlier in September 1975.
One visitor commented, ‘Love this exhibition. Revealed aspects of The Tempest in a different way’. While another said, ‘Amazing exhibition. So pleased I spotted this in passing’.
A Farewell to Art draws on a number of themes, including the relationship between Shakespeare’s Renaissance aristocratic characters in The Tempest and Chagall’s own imaginary mythological world. The exhibition proposes that Chagall saw Shakespeare’s The Tempest as symbolic of the tempest that engulfed his own life and the traumatic experiences of European Jews in the first half of the twentieth century.
Chagall knew the pain of being a refugee, having recognised his future lay outside Russia. He settled in Paris in 1907 and then, after being caught in his hometown of Vitebsk during the First World War, eventually managed to return in 1923. He was then forced into exile from his home in Paris in 1941 due to Nazi occupation and escaped to New York. It would be perfectly understandable if he compared himself to the exiled Prospero.
Towards the last act, the lead character Prospero famously gives up his ‘rough magic’ and 'drowns his book'. Many have read Prospero’s abdication of magic as symbolic of Shakespeare’s own farewell to writing, as The Tempest is recognised as the last complete play he wrote. Chagall’s illustrations add many different dimensions and can be interpreted in many ways as his own ‘farewell’ to his prolific artistic output on projects of this scale.
All artworks on display are courtesy of the Ben Uri Collection, where the exhibition was first shown in 2017.
For more information about A Farewell to Art: Chagall, Shakespeare and Prospero and to book tickets, please visit https://www.arcwinchester.org.uk/event/farewell-art-chagall-shakespeare-and-prospero.
There are also several film screenings and talks running alongside this exhibition. For more information and to book tickets, please visit https://www.arcwinchester.org.uk/events?category=39.