The birthday

I admit I am fond to painting due to the easiness with which its speech can be reconfigured. Painting has the solvency and credit in its arguments to do whatever it pleases if it perpetuates and recreates emotions in a way that makes us forget we thought only music was capable of providing them; this is the whim of painting, to link life instants in every piece.

With this sole reflection, I wanted to start by sharing something about the plastic artists that have interested me the most and this is why I invite you to recall the special sensation you experienced the first time you kissed someone in the lips, can you remember? Well, that is exactly what an artwork can make us feel thanks to the connection to our ‘sensitive being’ with painting, regardless of such encounter being in a museum, gallery, book, or internet; the important part ‘is that’ when it is love at first sight, the piece will make it sure to smitten you and will wake an impulse in your senses to know it even more.

I can strongly remember that the first time I fell to my knees before The Birthday by Mark Chagall was on a book in my years as university student. I read it sporadically after many visits to the bookstore and, in each of them, I hid it out of its place expecting to avoid its purchase by an ill-timed buyer; the day finally came when I could afford it and I took it home. Fifteen years had to pass for me to enjoy the great opportunity to see The Birthday in person in its residence: the #MOMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York). Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not planning my visit well, so I only had 15 minutes to enjoy it. In my defense, I will say that it was my honeymoon, so I can assert that, as a result, my emotions were not really piled on the painting at that moment; in addition, the paranoia lived in this city due to the attacks to Twin Towers did not help, which made accesses to the museum halls very slow. On my way to the exit, I stumbled upon a ‘gift shop’ in which not even Chagall thought he would sell posters of his work; in that same moment, I acquired my copy of it, which since has occupied a very special place in my studio.

Sometimes I pass unnoticed in front of the birthday, but some other times I stop in front of it to contemplate it and I start to question myself why Mark Chagall painted it in the way that he did, imagining what he felt. This is why I am extremely moved by the fact that the main image is starred by him and his wife as newlyweds, melted in a kiss that makes them float to the center of the room in a way so sweet that the vain complicity of its color palette helps us understand that Mark Chagall painted it with his heart.

On the other hand, we can observe in its composition the way it is nourished by a spatial tension among all objects inside the painting, which gravitate in axial equilibrium the same time they play with the visual tension among them, while compensating according to the visual weight of each figure involved; additionally, its obsessed detail in some of the elements like fittings and textile engraves contrast with the ease in the management of human figure, which does not lack anything. If that weren’t enough, it possesses a cheeky attitude that seems to completely ignore the shameless distortion of vertexes with a subtle grace that only a painter so in love as Mark Chagall can have the luxury of showing us that both poetry and painting cannot live either separated or through love.

These are my #twoCoins about the reflections that, as Nono, I’ve come to understand. I await your comments and opinions and invite you to visit the video blog in YouTube where you can find me as: nono lat. Thank you very much and see you soon.