1911

Half-Past Three (The Poet)

French (born Vitebsk, Russian Empire), 1887 - 1985

Chagall made this painting shortly after leaving St. Petersburg, Russia, where he attended art school, and arriving in Paris in 1911. One of a group of monumental, euphoric works, it demonstrated his mastery and distinctive formulation of the latest avant-garde artistic developments in his new home. That meant embracing the head-spinning style known as Cubism. This painting is a portrait of Mazin, a Russian poet who often stopped by Chagall’s studio to drink coffee while his friend painted late into the night. Diagonal shafts of color generate kaleidoscopic energy, and the transparency of forms creates a teasing, ambiguous effect; the portrait detaches from ordinary reality. Mazin’s topsy-turvy head may relate to an idiom Chagall would have known from his childhood spent in the Jewish community of Vitebsk in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. The Yiddish fardreiter kop (turned head) signifies a giddy mental state—an apt description for this image of poetic inspiration.