Curator, Anne Umland: The artist Marc Chagall made this work when he had just moved to the city of Paris and he was still thinking about his faraway home in a small village. So I like to think about this as a memory picture for Chagall of a place that he is far away from at that moment.
You can see this big, green profile of a man wearing this little pink cap perched up on his head. Directly across from him is this equally big profile of a white and blue cow. If you look at their eyes, you can see that the artist has connected them by this very thin line. It makes me think there is some sort of connection between this green guy and the goat.
In the cheek, you can see this little scene of a woman milking a cow. Further up, in the center, is an upside-down woman and a right-side-up man. And then there’s this row of teeny tiny houses at the very top of the picture. All the overlapping circles and shapes and the bringing together of things that seem very close and very far at the same time contributes to the sense, for me, that we’re looking at a memory.
When you dream, things can come together in unusual ways. This painting is illogical, and that’s part of its wonderful magic and mystery.