Time & Perspective Quote by Marc Chagall

A lot of artists claim to be versatile; Chagall makes versatility sound like courtship. "I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment" flips the usual story of mastery. The medium isnt a tool to be conquered, its a temperament you have to read, a partner that either opens up or doesnt. That small personification ("likes me") is doing heavy lifting: it nudges art away from the industrial myth of control and toward something older and more mystical, where materials have their own weather.

It also slyly protects him from the gatekeepers who wanted painters to stay in their lane. Chagall moved restlessly across oil, gouache, ink, stained glass, ceramics, stage design, book illustration. In the 20th century, when movements arrived with manifestos and strict uniforms, he kept a poets relationship to form. His work could be read as modernist, folkloric, Jewish, French, Russian, surreal, but it never sat politely inside any one label. This line is a refusal to be pinned down.

The context matters: a life stretched across exile, revolution, and diaspora. Chagall knew what it meant to be told where you belong. Letting the medium "choose" him becomes a kind of artistic statelessness, a way to keep making when circumstances change. The subtext is permission: not every day calls for the same language. Sometimes paint is too heavy, glass carries the light better, a sketch is the only honest scale. The intent isnt laziness or whim; its fidelity to the moment, and to whatever form can bear it.