"Chagall and I !" The 50th anniversary of the Chagall Museum - Part 2

Anniversary Exhibition
Chagall and I ! The 50th Anniversary of the Chagall Museum

Scheduled to run until 4 September 2023, the exhibition has been extended until 8 January 2024. 

In 2023, we will joyfully celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Marc Chagall national Museum. Inaugurated by the artist on his birthday, July 7th, 1973, the museum, or rather the house that Chagall wanted to host the cycle of the Biblical Message, still carries a powerful universal message today: "Since my early youth, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me, and still does, to be the greatest source of poetry of all time. [...] The world is like a vast desert to me, in which my soul wanders like a torch. I have created these paintings in harmony with that distant dream. I wanted to leave them in this House so that people can try to find a certain peace, a certain spirituality, religiosity, and a sense of life."¹

To celebrate this generous gift made 50 years ago, the exhibition Chagall and I ! invites present-day personalities such as artists, writers, dancers, musicians, and more to share their contemporary interpretation of these paintings. Chagall and Me! will unveil multiple surprises and will be accompanied by a rich program that will culminate on the weekend of July 7, 2023, the anniversary of Marc Chagall and the museum!

Curators: Anne Dopffer, Director of the National Museums of the 20th Century in the Alpes-Maritimes, Grégory Couderc, Scientific Officer for the Marc Chagall national Museum , and Gaïdig Lemarié, Cultural Partnerships Manager for the National Museums of the 20th Century in the Alpes-Maritimes.

An exhibition in three parts

Part 2: from May 13th to September 4th, 2023
The invited artists are:

Serge Bloch, illustrator
Born in Alsace in 1956, Serge Bloch is a renowned illustrator. He works for the press, publishing, and communication industries. From 1987 to 2010, he served as the artistic director at Bayard. His drawings regularly appear in newspapers and magazines in France and abroad, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, Time, L'Obs, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. Serge Bloch is widely acclaimed for his children's publications and has received numerous awards for his books. He frequently exhibits his drawings in cities such as Paris, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Berlin, and Lisbon. He also creates immersive and interactive exhibitions, including "Il était plusieurs fois" with Frédéric Boyer at 104 in Paris, Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, and the Museum of the Reformation in Geneva. Another notable exhibition is "Les Boîtes à Rire" at 104 in Paris, Comédie de Reims, and Uzès. For more information

Frédéric Boyer, writer, translator, publisher
Frédéric Boyer, born in Cannes in 1961, is an acclaimed writer, editor, and translator. He is the director of P.O.L Editions and has authored around forty books since 1991, including novels, essays, poems, and translations. His work combines personal writing with revisiting and translating significant ancient texts. He led a new collective translation of the Bible, undertaken by specialists in biblical texts and languages, as well as contemporary authors (published by Bayard in 2001). Boyer also writes for theater and opera.
For more information

Jean-Claude Ellena, parfumer
Born in 1947 in Grasse, the birthplace of modern perfumery, Jean-Claude Ellena made his first breakthrough in 1976 with First by Van Cleef & Arpels. He has since created fragrances for renowned perfume houses such as Bulgari, Cartier, Yves Saint-Laurent, as well as niche perfumeries like L'Artisan Parfumeur, Editions Frédéric Malle, and Le Couvent since 2019. For more information

ilia Osokin, musician and composer
Born in Kaliningrad in 1991, Ilia Osokin is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He received his training at the Tchaikovsky Central School in Moscow and later attended the Longy School of Music in Boston. He began his career as a cellist and settled in France in 2015. Osokin's compositional work is characterized by innovative musical writing that combines hybrid sounds, including cello, piano, harpsichord, vocals, electronics, and organic sounds taken from natural environments. Collaborating with visual artists, choreographers, graphic novel authors, filmmakers, and research engineers, he creates auditory journeys and listening devices that manipulate the perception of time and space. For more information

Keong-A Song, artist and illustrator
Born in Seoul in 1974, Keong-A Song studied art at Sungshine Women's University in Seoul before leaving South Korea to join the National School of Art and Design of Nancy in France. Primarily working in the field of publishing, she creates books inspired by her personal life and journeys, where anthropomorphic beings, architectural motifs, folk culture, and atmospheric phenomena coexist. Her illustration and drawing work is also commissioned and exhibited by international contemporary art organizations, performing arts groups, and children's publications.
For more information

With a special Anniversary weekend on July 7th, 8th, and 9th 2023. To see the full programme, click here

Part 3: From September 16th to January 8th, 2024
The list of future participants will be announced later.

If you missed the first part of the exhibition...
The first part of the exhibition, dedicated to the museum's 50th anniversary, took place from January 28th to April 30th, 2023.

The invited artists were:
- Asier Edeso, dancer and choreographer
- Makiko Furuichi, visual artist
- Mimoza Koike, dancer and choreographer
- Stéphane Lambert, writer
To learn more about this first installment, click here

Also, don't forget to visit our YouTube channel to watch artist interviews by clicking on the image below.

¹ Marc Chagall, speech at the opening of the Marc Chagall national Museum, 1973.

View of the exhibition Chagall and I ! Contemporary perspectives on Marc Chagall, at the National Museum Marc Chagall, in Nice. Keong-A Song, graphic series, Hand to Hand (2023), produced by National Museum Marc Chagall. Photo: © National Museums of the 20th Century in the Alpes-Maritimes / François Fernandez © ADAGP, Paris, 2023.

Exhibition poster, Marc Chagall, L'Echelle, 1957, original lithograph from the book Jacques Lassaigne, "CHAGALL", Paris, Maeght publisher, 1957. © ADAGP, Paris, 2023. Graphic design: Caroline Pauchant, 2023.