Arshak Andriasov

My Conversation with Marc Chagall.

Arshak Andriasov: Dearest Marc Chagall, thank you for showing us all how it is possible to blend a wonderful world of balanced harmony with turbulent explosive passion through color and form. How were you able to unify these emotional energies?

Marc Chagall: “In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.”

Arshak Andriasov: How wonderful it is that you feel this way. In my conversation series, the one unifying factor that people like Van Gogh, Gandhi, and Dostoyevsky all have in common is the ability to put love as their main focal point of life.

Marc Chagall: “Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.”

Arshak Andriasov: This way of life definitely makes it possible for your creations to flourish. Your paintings are full of love. With your love given to the canvas, one might never want a painting to be finished. How do you know when it is time to complete the work?

Marc Chagall: “When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art.”

Arshak Andriasov: What a unique perspective you have.

Marc Chagall: “The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. If I create with my heart almost all my intentions remain. If it is with the head – almost nothing. An artist must not fear to be himself, to express only himself. If he is absolutely and entirely sincere, what he says and does will be acceptable to others.”

Arshak Andriasov: How refreshing it is to hear someone being genuine. Sometimes it is truly difficult to deal with the prevailing atmosphere of the public. Their ability to bring so much bitterness and anger to the world without a hint of beauty or intellect is exhausting.

Marc Chagall: “Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up or on man’s hope in love. If all life moves inevitably towards it’s end, then we must, during our own, color it with our colors of love and hope.”

Arshak Andriasov: If we look at it from that perspective, it is true. But only because of people like you who strived to create a beautiful world for us all to delve into.

Marc Chagall: “Love and fantasy, go hand in hand. The freer the soul, the more abstract painting becomes. Art seems to me to be above all of a state of soul. I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension. In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.”

Arshak Andriasov: Wonderful. What a wave in your answer. How you brought out your advice, perspective, and art with this one answer. Even though you expressed in detail everything, I still must ask what advice would you have for people?

Marc Chagall: “Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.”

Arshak Andriasov: Thank you dear friend. Your advice has helped people and will continue to thrive.