Just framed a print of this painting by Chagall and hung it in my study at College. It's a bit loud in its red frame alongside other prints in more sedate burnished bronze, pine and gold.
Is the mood in this scene anxious, expectant, hilarious, poignant, tense?
All of these and more - how else draw the artist into the trap of painting the impossible communion of heaven with earth, eternal purpose with quotidian humanity, outrageous promise with long familiar disappointment, God's laughter of future joy and human laughter of disbelief subverted by the glimpsed beginning of risky trustfulness.
The angels are central to the picture, but Sarah is central to the story - no wonder she laughed. And no wonder we always fail to explain in our superior cleverness what that laugh meant. Chagall depicts hospitality in all its mutuality, ambiguity, inconvenience and possibility.
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Came away to College without my copy of Buechner - will be a couple of days more waiting before the second part of the quotation from the previous post - hope it feels worth waiting for!
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