An exclusive Marc Chagall exhibit is currently running in the U.S. at the Dallas Museum of Art. "Beyond Color" presents lesser known works by the artist, including a centerpiece of costumes he designed for the 1942 Léonide Massine ballet Aleko - with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The costumes have only been seen in the U.S. once before - in 1942 when the ballet was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York - and 4 weeks after a Mexico City opening where the audience included famous muralists like Diego Rivera and José Orozco and concluded "with tumultuous applause" and 19 curtain calls. The hero of the evening, Chagall had also painted the backdrops for the ballet, and in New York, where the ballet was similarly received, art critic Edwin Denby described "a dramatized exhibition of giant paintings... It surpasses anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in the theatre."
The exhibit reportedly follows some of Chagall's visual relationships to Mexico and the southwest, also to space and volume. It includes ceramics, collages, and to a lesser degree, some of his paintings. The costumes themselves (hand-painted by Chagall) were sewn by seamstresses in Mexico where Chagall traveled in the course of working on the ballet. They were found in a Mexico City storeroom in the eighties.
Organized by DMA curator Olivier Meslay, and with Musée La Piscine in Roubeaux, France. The exhibit runs to May 26, 2013.
*Photo credit/Art and Seek/One of Chagall's handpainted costumes for the 1942 Léonide Massine ballet "Aleko," "Costume For A Fish."
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