Chagall: A Biography The author has both a gifted ear and a gifted eye. She is able to contextualize Chagall's art, as all good biographers' must, from tsarist Russia catapulting toward revolution and the diaspora of Russian Jews into Europe amidst the swirling decades leading up to the rise of Hitler while paying close attention to the exceptionality of a great artist tested by these times. It is a book I relished reading every word of. I've already recommended it to friends. Lovingly researched, comprehensive and thoughtful in searching out the motivations of an artist and recreation of that experience, beautifully written, it is the best read I've enjoyed in a long time.

This biography, pitched as doing for Chagall what Richardson did with Picasso, is instead a disappointment. There are lots of scaled down color plates/reproductions of paintings...lots. They are in groupings throughout the book. The words tell about Chagall's social mileau: who he knew, was romantically involved with, what artists were friends and rivals, what places he went during historically tumultuous times. The paintings reproduced and the words do not refer to one another. Little insight into what paintings arose out of what passions, interests, changes in his life. One telling way to see this: usually color plates are numbered so that the text can refer to them; the plates in this book are not numbered. It's this weird gulf between life and art that begs for connections not here made.