#JesuitMuseums: Marquette University

AJCU’s #JesuitMuseums series is back for the summer! Today’s post on Marc Chagall’s Ezekiel’s Vision comes from the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University.

Marc Chagall, French, born Belarus, 1887–1985, Ezekiel’s Vision, 1957, Hand-colored etching, 24 x 18 in, 61 x 45.7 cm, 80.7.104, Gift of Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty, Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University.

Each year, every student in Marquette University’s Honors Foundations in Theology course visits the Haggerty Museum of Art to view and discuss prints from Marc Chagall’s Bible: a series of 105 etchings inspired primarily by passages from the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. The etching shown here, entitled Ezekiel’s Vision, is the artist’s interpretation of Ezekiel I: 6–14. Chagall’s unique treatment of Old Testament narratives focuses on direct encounters between man and God. Compositional details are highlighted in watercolor by the artist, while the iconography is an amalgamation of symbolic motifs and representations from Jewish Hasidism, western Christianity, and Russian cultural identity. Chagall’s Bible series powerfully explores the interreligious and cultural legacy of the Bible through the eyes of a Russian-Jewish artist living in Catholic-dominant France following the persecution of European Jews in World War II.

Contributed by Susan Longhenry, Director and Chief Curator at the Haggerty Museum of Art.