"Right." I nodded meekly, wondering how my friends had managed to land Bonnard and Cezanne while I'd got ladies' perfume and the little black dress. It didn't seem very me. Fortunately, but embarrassingly (oh, how the art teachers laughed) this misunderstanding was cleared up before the end of term, and I spent my August collecting Chagall postcards, reading one of those great big glorious Taschen books and copying the colour plates with oil pastels (albeit in a rather incongruous spirit of carefulness). I've loved Chagall ever since, in the way you only love the things you fall for in your teens.
I spent a happy couple of hours at Tate Liverpool in July, wandering round the Chagall:Modern Master exhibition. I don't know if 'Chagallian' is an adjective but if it is I want to be it (as a writer...as a person). To be Chagallian is (off the top of my head) to be lyrical, magical, colourful, joyful, nostalgic, exotic, homely, musical, whimsical, insouciant and kind. (Qualities I would earnestly strive for, if earnest striving wasn't a bit unChagallian.) I found this painting, The Red Jew (1915), very moving. I'd always skimmed past it in books, thinking that he looked a bit of a grump, unlike Chagall's usual gentle rabbis. But then the audio-guide (which, by the by, is informative and to the point, like the exhibition itself : long enough to absorb; short enough that neither brain nor feet are aching before it's through) pointed out that The Red Jew's divided face - one melancholy eye open, the other shut - shows a life lived in both prayerful introspection and engagement with the world. I looked again and bought the postcard in the museum shop. He's propped up on my desk even as we speak, and I can't get him to do the querulous look anymore.
Chagall:Modern Master is on at Tate Liverpool until October 6th.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/chagall-modern-master
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