The work that I chose is titled “Anywhere out of the World”, painted by Marc Chagall from 1915 to 1919. In the description of the painting, it is said that this “may be a self-portrait.” More commonly, self-portrait art is depicted as a rather complete depiction (or imitation), but different in degree, depending on the artist in context. Why this work is experimental as art, is because in the art world, the general axiom is that art imitates life; the painting in context at first glance does not imitate life, since the painting depicts a man with his head split into two pieces, given that the pieces are depicted with two different colors, blue and purple… why?

Given the description next to the portrait, we can read that the pictorial strategy (method of illustration) “could be a rendition of the ‘luftmensch’, a Yiddish term used to describe a person who is concerned with intellectual pursuits rather than with the practicalities of life.” Historically, the time period we are dealing with is the early 20th century in Russia. During 1917, Russia had undergone the Russian Revolution, which had brought about major changes to not only Russian society, but also to Russian politics, and to the entire Russian economy. Surely, there was change in the region where Chagall worked as an artist. Politically, the message in Chagall’s painting was dissimilation: stepping out of the normal practicalities of life. Essentially, Chagall dealt with philosophical thought rather than the thoughts fed to him by the society around him. It is interesting to see how the changes that the time period in which Chagall lived are depicted in his painting.

Even at first glance, where the painting seems more abstract than a well-depicted imitation, looking deeper we eventually see how the painting indeed depicts the exact political situation of Russia, the country that Marc Chagall resides in during the Russian Revolution. It is obvious that this is depicted by Chagall through not only splitting the top portion of the figure’s (in the painting) head from the rest of the body leaving a “blank space there”, but also through the illustration of color, where the cool, calm, collective blue ways of society remains below, attached to the whole of the collective, while the intellectual, creative, pondering purple part of the collective, where massive change occurs from, is separated as the top part of the head. The intertwined intellectual, artistic and abstract ideas presented in the painting show how the work’s experimental style is indeed linked to its political message.

“As above the macrocosm bends, so below the microcosm corresponds.”