I will never forget the first time I walked into the Paris Opera house and saw the ceiling. What a splendid and breath-taking experience: the colors and fanciful figures on them were vibrating like music and they made the whole room glow with incandescent life. It was painted by Marc Chagall in 1964. By mid-20th century, Moishe Shagal (his original name) was already a major international artist, having produced thousands of paintings, stained glass windows, book illustrations, stage sets and costumes, all of which had been shown in the world's greatest art museums.

Born in 1887, the eldest of nine children in Vitebsk, Russia, Chagall discovered his passion for art early in life. He began to draw what he knew—what he saw around him in his village. That unique, almost child-like focus became his hallmark, in addition to an extraordinarily vivid use of color. Author Michael Lewis states: "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers..." As well as exuberant anthropomorphic figures—chiefly birds, goats, and cows—which serve as rustic representations of abstract concepts.

Chagall's childhood sweetheart and later wife, Bella, also plays an important role in his art: she appears over and over in various settings, and always as a love object. The current exhibition is predominantly illustrations for books: Gogol's 'Dead Souls', Longus' 'Daphnis and Chloe', La Fontaine's 'Fables', and his own autobiography, 'My Life'.

What was the impetus for selecting specifically Chagall's book illustrations? Has this not been done before as a touring collection?

This Chagall exhibition, the first (as I am told) in Turkey, was organized especially for the Pera Museum. It has never been done as a “touring collection”. The exhibition reflects the holdings of Chagall works in the collection of Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It is not only book illustrations. There are a small number of important paintings, and also drawings that are not connected to any of his work for books. Chagall, a figurative artist who never crossed the boundaries towards abstraction, loved the challenge of giving visual form to words – namely book illustration.

Some of his literary illustrations were for his wife's two books: 'Burning Lights' and 'First Encounter', where she talks about meeting him for the first time. Do you think they have a special vibrancy because of his great love for her?

In a word – yes. Bella’s books are written with a lot of love. Love for Vitebsk and love for her husband. Chagall had a special feeling for words. That is true of his book illustrations for Gogol’s Dead Souls and La Fontaine’s Fables, and he had a most special feeling for the words of the Bible and those in his beloved wife’s books.

Among the many animals in Chagall's pictures, we frequently see images of an enchanted goat, or a goat-man. Did Chagall attach a special significance to this creature?

The goat is a domestic animal. It is not an animal whose meat is eaten but it gives milk, from the milk cheese is made and, like chickens, it does not require a lot of space or extra special attention. That is why it was often part of the household in the Eastern European villages where most the Jews lived at the time. There is also the “scapegoat”, the original goat upon whose head people symbolically place their sins.

Chagall must have adored women, since the females in his paintings are diaphanous, sexy, and sweet. Do you think they all reflected his love for his wife Bella? Do we know anything about his mother—do any images of her appear?

Yes. I think his love for women reflects both his appreciation of beauty and his love for Bella. Regarding his mother, she is definitely mentioned more than once. In the series My Life she is seen as a big woman dragging her young son to school while he is begging her to think of his wish to become a painter. In another image the mother’s tomb is seen. In the exhibit's catalogue, there is a photograph of his parents where his mother is clearly not a big woman but she seemed strong and decisive as often women in Hasidic families are.

One of his most famous paintings is a human hugging a giant rooster. What is your interpretation of this?

According to the Chagall scholars, in the 1920s he invented many ways of showing the different aspects of human love, often exchanging one of the human figures for an animal. The cock first appeared as the central motif of a painting addressing the theme of lovers in 1929. There is no doubt that it carried symbolic significance for Chagall. It evoked recollections of his childhood but the figure of the cock has for thousands of years played a part in religious rites as the embodiment of the forces of the sun and of fire. In the artist’s works, the cock serves to represent elementary spiritual power.

Chagall was not a dysfunctional neurotic and suffering artist, despite extreme poverty in his childhood, surviving two world wars, and dealing with ferocious anti-Semitism in Europe. How do you think he kept his positive spirit and kept producing such amazing works?

This is a very interesting question. I think Chagall had been recognized as a great artist quite early in his life both by his family members – his mother and his wife - as well as by influential people in the art world. That surely contributed to his love of life and his being so very prolific throughout it.