This book has an ambitious aim—to reconstruct and re-assess the complex relationship between Marc Chagall and his native Vitebsk. The study is supported by a wealth of documentation and archival research—often previously unknown documents, unearthed from various archives in Vitebsk. Despite its modest size, this book is clearly the result of intensive research in Russian archives; it uses a lot of previously unknown primary material and possesses a good scholarly apparatus. It is well documented.
The author clearly knows the subject well and is conversant with the current thought on the subject, showing a detailed knowledge of primary and secondary sources (although I felt that in some cases the author relies too heavily on Alexandra Shatskikh's volume on Vitebsk). Apart from shedding new light on Chagall's life and work in Vitebsk, Martinovich provides a very useful account of street decorations of Vitebsk on the first anniversary of the October Revolution and of Kazimir Malevich's arrival in Vitebsk.
The structure of the book is well balanced, although in the first chapters the author spends perhaps too much space discussing inaccuracies in the information regarding Chagall's date and place of birth; although this information is important, such lengthy discussion is not very necessary.
Another inaccuracy occurs in the description of the reasons for the help given by David Shterenberg to Chagall (113). Somehow, the author fails to mention that both artists had studios in the famous La Ruche in Paris before the First World War, which explains their strong bond in post-revolutionary years.
Martinovich's book is nominally composed of three sections. The first deals with myths and mistakes which have often occurred in Chagall's biographies. It also offers an account of Chagall's return to Vitebsk from Paris. The second part describes Chagall's post-revolutionary work in Vitebsk, his conflicts with the artist Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and art-critic Aleksandr Romm, and his contradictory new rules and monopolistic control of his art school specializing in artistic production in Vitebsk. It also highlights the earlier dominant role of Chagall and the later hegemony of Malevich. The final chapter deals with the oblivion of people in Vitebsk toward Chagall and his oeuvre, as well as the broader contemporary attitude toward Chagall in Belorussia.
With the new wave of interest in Chagall's life and work in Vitebsk, which will likely only be accelerated by the upcoming exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris called Chagall, Lissitzky, Malévitch: L'avant-garde Russe à Vitebsk (1918–1922), this book makes a valuable contribution to the field of Russian art history. Martinovich brings out the hallucinatory vigor of Chagall's visionary life, and also the extreme solipsism of his personality. It is a well-written, compassionate portrait of a paragon of human talent and ambition confronted by misunderstanding and mediocrity.
