Lecturer insists on unlikely pairing of Chagall and Elvis
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Mention a 20th century master like Marc Chagall to the fans at Graceland and you’re likely to draw little more than blank stares.
But a lecturer on Chagall sees an artistic connection between the Russian-born French painter and the Mississippi-born king of rock ‘n’ roll.
“They had a message for us, and that message is hope, reconciliation and love,” said Vivian Jacobson, who will present an “Evening with Elvis and Chagall” this month at one of Memphis’ main art museums.
But do the fans in Memphis this week for the 28th anniversary of Presley’s death see a link between Elvis and the deeply spiritual work of Chagall?
“Well, I don’t know too much about that,” said Tom Smith, a retired plumber from Toledo, Ohio.
But Smith does know what he likes in a painting, particularly one of Elvis.
Taking in a show of art work by Presley fans, Smith was moved by a piece depicting a jumpsuited Elvis on stage with the faces of his mother, Gladys, and father, Vernon, floating in a wisp of clouds above.
“It takes a lot of time to do these things,” Smith said. “You don’t just throw this stuff together.”
The art show at Graceland, Presley’s famous white-columned house, is part of a weeklong string of dances, fan-club meetings and Elvis impersonator contests held each year on the death anniversary.
The bacchanalia peaks Monday night with a candlelit procession of several thousand fans to Presley’s grave beside the Graceland swimming pool.
Most of the Elvis faithful will be gone when Jacobson gives her lecture Aug. 21, but she hopes to draw new fans to both Presley and Chagall.
The program at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens will feature slides of Chagall’s work accompanied by Presley’s music.
Jacobson, a speaker for the North Carolina Humanities Council, delivers six to 12 lectures a year on various aspects of Chagall’s work to churches, synagogues and community groups. She is a former president of the American Friends of the Chagall Biblical Message Museum in Nice, France.
“Many people who know Elvis don’t know anything about Chagall, so they learn about Chagall,” she said. “And a lot of Chagall people really don’t know anything about Elvis.”
Jacobson said she began listening to Presley’s music a few years ago when a friend gave her an Elvis CD.
“Because I know and love the paintings of Marc Chagall, I could pick out 20 in my mind, visualize the paintings, while Elvis was singing ‘The Wonder of You,'” she said.
Chagall, who died at age 98 in 1985, dealt often with religious themes. Among his best-known works are 12 stained-glass windows at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem that tell the Old Testament story of Jacob and his sons.
Of course, Elvis didn’t write his own songs and many were performed first by other entertainers, but for Jacobson, his recordings rise to the level of art, nevertheless.
She also sees comparisons in Presley’s and Chagall’s personal lives:
Chagall was born into a poor, strongly religious family, and though Jewish, studied the art in Christian churches. Presley’s parents were also poor, and he got much of his musical inspiration from black churches as well as from his own white Pentecostal upbringing.
“They had a spiritual open heart,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Memphis museum and the Bornblum Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Memphis.
David Patterson, the center’s director, said an Elvis-Chagall connection might be a bit offbeat, “but I’m willing to give it a chance.”
“It’s sort of high culture and popular culture getting together,” he said.
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