Chagall: A Retrospective

Calling Marc Chagall the greatest image-maker of this century, Andre Malraux, in one of the selections in this gorgeously illustrated anthology, probes the Russian-born artist's ``inner dialogue with himself.'' French art critic Alain Jouffroy explores ``the omnipotence of the Chagallian dream'' mingling ``love, reality, society, poetry, revolution, the circus'' into a seamless universe where fantasy, reality and illusion coexist. Baal-Teshuva, a critic, curator and friend of Chagall from 1951 until the artist's death in 1985, splices Chagall's letters, reminiscences and lectures and excerpts from his autobiography, My Life; essays by critics John Russell, Emily Genauer, Katharine Kuh; reminiscences by poets Osip Mandelstam, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Guillaume Apollinaire, Edouard Roditi; and recollections by friends and family including Chagall's first wife, Bella Rosenfeld, and Virginia Haggard McNeil, his companion for seven years, with whom he had a son, David McNeil. The result is a unique, multifaceted portrait of Chagall's love affair with life, art and the world. (Nov.)