2023-04-30 14:50:55
Thirty thousand letters, 5,000 photographs and a total of 55,000 documents. This gives an idea of the Marc and Ida Chagall archives, managed by the Association of Friends of Marc Chagall chaired by the artist’s granddaughter, Meret Meyer. Launched last month, the marcchagall.com site dedicated to the artist of Russian origin presents a selection of documents and reproductions of works accessible free of charge.
Collecting and digitizing artist archives
Instead of the traditional paper catalogue, the Association of Friends of Marc Chagall preferred its digital version, which is more accessible and easier to update. A first volume on the 97 sculptures, supervised by art historian Ambre Gauthier, is already available. The site will gradually accommodate the various techniques explored by Marc Chagall.
“Even if only part of the abundant correspondence of Marc Chagall will be put online, in the long term the goal of the website is to contain the catalog raisonné of the artist in its entirety”, explains Ambre Gauthier. Next step in 2024, with the publication of the volume on ceramics.
If Marc Chagall is above all known as a great colorist, the platform also strives to discover lesser known parts of his work, which unfolded between drawing, engraving, painting and ceramics. His favorite themes – religion, couples, mythology – being transposed from one medium to another.
Forbidding, the archives?
The catalog is aimed primarily at art professionals and collectors, but the site offers the “Discovery” section, designed for the general public. Allowing navigation through selections of works, it “favours an interactive and sensory approach”says Quitterie du Vigier, researcher for the website.
In some ways, the layout of the “Discover” tab is akin to another digital jumble: Pinterest. This Web player at the crossroads of the social network and the search engine allows its users to share their centers of interest through photo albums. Similarly, the marcchagall.com site offers four thematic albums: colors, themes, materials and workshops – the different places occupied by the artist.
“As close as possible to the creative gesture, this immersion in the atmosphere of the workshops, in the color or the material, reveals the multiple facets of his known and unknown work and the diversity of the techniques experimented by the artist”comments Quitterie du Vigier.
Archives: potential reservoirs of stories?
How to showcase thousands of scanned documents? The Paul-Klee Center in Bern encounters the same questions. Opened in 2005, this museum houses the largest collection in the world of the artist, a set of more than 4,000 works, paintings, watercolors and drawings combined. “Everything has been digitized, but beyond the creation of huge databases, we must now propose ways to bring these huge bodies of archives to life by offering podcasts, for example”underlines the director of the collections Fabienne Eggelhöfer.
She would like to draw inspiration from the British Museum which, in 2020, made 300,000 new works accessible on its site, bringing the number of digitized pieces to 4.5 million. This online publication is accompanied by mediation around the museum’s flagship works or thematic files. This approach is all the more essential for artists’ foundations, which do not have an exhibition space.
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