Tactile Relief - Hommage à Apollinaire
Description and Manual
Marc Chagall Hommage à Apollinaire - Homage to Appolinaire 1913 Oil on canvas 203 by 192 cm Tactile relief
You are now on the small balcony. Here is the tactile relief of one of the icons from the collection of the Van Abbemuseum: a painting by Marc Chagall, which pays tribute to the poet and art critic Guilliaume Apollinaire.
The original painting is a large, almost square painting measuring roughly two by two meters. Chagall painted this in Paris, influenced by the work of Picasso and Braque. They had introduced cubism as a new painting style there around 1910.
See if you can discover what this means in the representation.
The square painting encloses a circle. This is the basic form of the image.
The circle is fragmented into triangular planes.
If necessary, stop the sound in order to explore this some more.
Next, you could draw a diagonal line from the top right to the bottom left. This is mainly a dividing line in colour. On the left are warm colours such as red, gold and green, and on the right are cooler colours such as silvery-white, blue and black.
The circle is reminiscent of a clock. This feeling is reinforced by the numbers 9,0 and 1 that are depicted on the top edge.
In the centre of the circle are two human figures, like the so-called hands of a clock. Together, they share the lower half of one body. So you feel two legs, but two upper bodies. Can you discover this?
On the left, you feel a female figure with breasts and an apple in her hand. On the right, you feel a male figure. He holds his hand in front of his member.
You could also interpret the circle as a globe: man, here depicted as Adam and Eve, then becomes the centre of space and time.
The apple refers to the Fall, when man was expelled from paradise and the harmony between God and man was disrupted. According to Chagall, and in accordance with Jewish teachings, the aim should be to restore this harmony. What better way than through love? Think, for example, of the love for art and the artists: their names are written around the heart at the bottom left. The love of man and woman are also fused into a unity.
You can take a seat on the sofa in the hall to fully smell the scents that scent historian Caro Verbeek has created for this work. Perhaps you will smell aspects that cannot be expressed in words but can be expressed through scent.
Verbeek has also composed a fragrance for four other works in this room. Simply grab a card from the designated tray to smell it.
Text by Fleur Brom, museum teacher at the Van Abbemuseum.