Restoring a master

By KEN GREENLEAF | March 30, 2009

Wullschlager seems to assume, throughout this book, that Chagall was truly an important artist, yet the jury is still out on that. Hilton Kramer once remarked that what Chagall saw in the avant-garde art of his time went "in one eye and out the other," implying that he took the superficial aspects of modernist art and used them for his own, rather different, purposes.

History has not been particularly kind to Chagall's reputation. Whether Wullschlager's biography affects his position remains to be seen.

Ken Greenleaf can be reached at ken.greenleaf@gmail.com.

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