Painter’s Dream 1967

Marc Chagall created this print, Painter’s Dream, in the 20th century. It presents an image of the artist at work, overlooked by a figure carrying the tablets of law and menaced by a bloodied, horned creature. Chagall spent his early life in the Russian Empire, later immigrating to France. Both countries, with their own institutions of art and design, had well-established ideas of what art should be. ‘Painter’s Dream’ can be viewed as a challenge to those ideas, setting out an alternative vision of the artist as connected to both the spiritual and earthly realms. Moses overlooks the painter, as do the ghosts of antisemitism. The print testifies to the artist's struggle to synthesize tradition with innovation. The dream-like imagery is a product of the artist’s cultural position, in dialog with the dominant Western art world. For the art historian, the tools to understand this image are varied, ranging from close visual analysis to studies in cultural history. The meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional contexts.