Stories My Father Told Me by Jeffrey Lyons

Author:Jeffrey Lyons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abbeville Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Leonard Bernstein, Marc Chagall, and my father, July 1960.

MARC CHAGALL

Few of my parents’ friends ever affected them as deeply as did Marc Chagall. One of the three foremost painters of the twentieth century (Picasso and Dalí being the others), he was in some ways a spiritual link for my parents to their ancestors’ lives in Eastern Europe. He’d come to our home Friday nights during World War II when he was living in New York, for it was the only home in town where he could be certain the food was kosher.

I once saw him look at a painting in our home by Joan Miró, the great Spanish surrealist, and scoff: “Drek,” which in Yiddish means “Shit.” But he was a gentle man, always with a twinkle in his eye and a wonderful outlook on life, no matter how dark it was during a great deal of his lifetime.

Late in 1945, my father returned from a trip with the First Army Press Corps to Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s lair. One of the things he brought back was a proclamation awarding a Nazi Iron Cross to a Colonel Otto Benzin for some accomplishment—if you can call anything ever done by anyone wearing that uniform such a thing. And it was signed by Hitler himself.

Chagall saw it at our home and asked to paint his answer on the blank portion of the parchment. He was careful to sign it on the same line as Hitler, and, referring to Hitler’s failed career as an artist in Vienna as a young man, shrugged his shoulders and said: “Two painters.”

Years later, he returned to our home, and said he had to finish it. He took the parchment to his studio in New York for a few days. Then he returned it. He’d painted himself making love to his wife, a flying violin player, the burning ghetto, and jubilation in the streets at the liberation of Paris, led by the artists. The painting stretched all over the Nazi side of the parchment. He told us he did that to show that though threatened with castration by Hitler and Goebbels, he’d outlived Hitler. “In case somebody ever tries to separate the two halves of this,” he explained.

In January 1946, a soldier returned from the war proudly holding two Chagall paintings that he said he’d bought in Berlin. “I’m proud to have brought them from Germany,” he said. “The work of this great artist is too good to be owned by a Nazi.”

Then he met Chagall’s son-in-law who told him they were probably fakes. Chagall himself confirmed this after inspecting them.

Noting the disappointment and embarrassment of the soldier, Chagall, through an interpreter, said: “Maybe we can do something about this.” He took the canvases, washed away the paint, added back in the same scenes, signed his name and said: “Here. Now they’re genuine.”

Chagall had agents assigned to buying back some of his early paintings created when he was so poor. Some were painted on tablecloths, bedsheets, and even on shirttails. He reacquired those he felt could be improved.

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