Marc Chagall, “Exodus,” oil on canvas, 1952-66 (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou)

The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday, January 30, $13-$18, 8:00
Chagall and threeASFOUR exhibitions continue through February 2, $15 (free on Saturday)
212-423-3200
www.thejewishmuseum.org

“Should I paint the earth, the sky, my heart? / The cities burning, my brothers fleeing? / My eyes in tears. / Where should I run and fly, to whom?” So wrote Russian painter Marc Chagall in a poem when considering what subjects he should explore on canvas. That poem, among others written by the artist, appear high on the walls of the powerful, deeply personal Jewish Museum exhibit “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile.” People have been lining up outside in the freezing cold to experience the intimate show, which zeroes in on the period just before, during, and immediately following WWII, when Chagall and his beloved wife, Bella, were forced to first leave their home in Russia, then flee France for the United States as German power spread across Europe. The exhibition ends on February 2, and because of its popularity, the museum will be open on Wednesday, when it’s usually closed. In addition, the Chagall show, along with the small, sparkly fashion exhibit “threeASFOUR: MER KA BA,” will get an official public farewell Thursday evening in the special program “The Wind Up: Bright Winter Night,” which will include guided tours, an international beer tasting, and a live performance by Philly-born, Brooklyn-based indie singer-songwriter Mirah (Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn), who will soon be releasing her follow-up to such previous records as You Think It’s Like This But Really It’s Like This, Advisory Committee, and C’mon.

Marc Chagall, “Self-Portrait with Clock,” oil on canvas, 1947 (private collection)

“Chagall: Love, War, and Exile” consists of thirty-one paintings, twenty-two works on paper, and vitrines of photographs, illustrated books, letters, and other ephemera. The show is divided into four parts: “Time Is a River,” “War and Exile,” “The Jewish Jesus,” and “The Colors of Love,” in which Chagall incorporates his unique iconography and color palette — religious men holdings Torahs, a cow playing the violin, a glowing moon, mothers holding babies, angels floating in the sky, pendulums swinging on clocks — on canvases filled with pain, fear, and dread as he first watched the horror of the Nazis, then lost Bella to a sudden illness in 1944. “The Fall of the Angel” encapsulates Chagall’s oeuvre of the time, a painting that he began in 1923 and reworked in 1933 and 1947, centered by an angel in red, looking like a twisting fire, spiraling uncontrollably toward earth. In the right background is Christ on the cross; the crucifixion is seen in many of these works as Chagall, who was raised in an Orthodox family, uses the figure to represent Jewish suffering not only during the Holocaust but throughout time, as well as relating it to his own tortured soul, first tortured by guilt for having been able to escape the Nazis while his brethren were murdered, then by grief upon losing his wife on the eve of their starting a new life together. In “Exodus” (1952-66), a haloed, crucified Jesus looks over a mass of men, women, and children running from a burning shtetl, linking the escape from Egypt with the pogroms and the Holocaust. And in “Self-Portrait with Clock,” Chagall’s second wife, Virginia, bathed in blue, is leaning on the artist, who portrays himself as a red goat working on a canvas of a crucified Jesus being sorrowfully embraced by Bella in ghostly white as a winged clock flies away in the distance. It’s a haunting image, one of many in this haunting show.