Le bouquet de lilas 1968

Marc Chagall made "Le bouquet de lilas" using oil on canvas, and it's a doozy of a dreamscape. The painting uses a pretty limited colour palette, mostly blues and greens, but the colours seem to spill and blend into each other like he was making it up as he went along. Look at how the paint’s applied, kinda thin in some spots, thick and gloopy in others. There's a real flatness to the picture, like everything's been pressed up against the surface. Check out the blues around the edges, how they bleed into the background, creating this sort of unreal, dreamy space. And then, smack-dab in the center, there's that lilac bouquet exploding with a riot of pinks and whites. It's like the whole painting is just an excuse to show off these flowers. Chagall, like Picasso, was always messing around with perspective, flipping things upside down, and letting his imagination run wild. I’m reminded of Arthur Dove’s work, both had this way of turning ordinary objects into something kinda magical and otherworldly.