One of the highlights of my recent trip to New York City was the glorious Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum. Beauty deepens my relationship with God. This exhibit was for me a profound religious experience. None of the churches that I have visited in NYC have enhanced my relationship with God the way the museums do.
Art leads me through my senses to the spiritual. Like faith it calls me out of my little self and awakens me to wonder at an overwhelming Presence. Art reaches my feelings and opens my imagination and draws me into Beauty, whom I sometimes call God.
The first appeal of a painting for me are the colors and shapes. It was only after I let these wash over me that I went back through the exhibit reading some of the explanations of Chagall's symbolism. This deepened even more my relationship with God. Chagall, a Jew, painted many crucifixions as symbols of the suffering and persecution of Jews under Hitler. Here he paints Jesus wearing a distinctively Jewish loincloth. Jesus is comforted by Chagall's first wife. Chagall paints himself as a goat with his second wife comforting him. Above them time flies. The commentary describes the painting as "a work of longing and loss." (Sorry, the picture is below rather than above as usual)
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