Up: [[Marc Chagall, Russian Painter of Dreams]] Created: 2026-06-20 A few days after having a dream where a dog changed into a wolf, I came across this painting by [[Marc Chagall, Russian Painter of Dreams]]. I really like a lot of Chagall’s paintings, for reasons I’ve already enumerated in the note about him. But this painting especially fascinates me so I decided to learn more about it and try to figure out why. ![[Chagall - Hour Between Wolf and Dog.webp|600]] There is a French idiom *entre chien et loup* (between dog and wolf) to describe the time between light and darkness when you can’t distinguish a dog from a wolf. Chagall has turned the title around so the painting is representing the time between darkness and light. This might be because the Jewish Chagall fled Nazi-occupied France and was living in the darkness of anxious exile in the United States in the final two years of making this painting. The central figure is Chagall, the face on the right his first wife and muse, Bella who died in New York City a year after the painting of complications from the flu. I love the way the blue and white unite the faces and the duality of light and darkness this painting represents. Contemporary artist [Joe Michael](https://www.joemichael.co.nz/hour-of-change), writing about the phrase *entre chien et loup* highlights two other dualities: familiar and unknown, and domestic and wild. He concludes *It’s an uncertain threshold between hope and fear. This is the hour of change.* And here’s a wonderful passage in Jean Genet’s final memoir > [!Orbit] Jean Genet in *Prisoner of Love* > The hour between dog and wolf, that is, dusk, when the two can’t be distinguished from each other, suggests a lot of other things besides the time of day… The hour in which… every being becomes his own shadow, and thus something other than himself. The hour of metamorphoses, when people half hope, half fear that a dog will become a wolf. The hour that comes down to us from at least as far back as the early Middle Ages, when country people believed that transformation might happen at any moment. Apparently the windswept cloth around Bella’s neck is a recurring motif for Chagall. One suggestion is that he is creating a separation between the safe personal realm and the unpredictable and dangerous external world. Much of the background depicts a scene of Chagall’s childhood in Vitebsk. The rooster in the foreground clutching the child is elusive. We can’t ever know Chagall’s intentions because he didn’t explain his symbolism. The hold on the child and the child’s facial expression suggest anxiety; the existence of a child, perhaps that innocence is at risk. The rooster has several symbolic associations that would fit with this painting: - miraculous powers over darkness and evil (India; also Celtic, Scandinavian, Greek, and Egyptian traditions) - duality of masculine principles — courage and fidelity, but also aggression and war (China) - a [[Psychopomp]], guide of souls (Greeks and others) - another duality is the power to dispel ignorance and illusion versus destructive and total indulgence in passions > [!user] Rooster symbolism from Elizabeth Caspari, *Animal Life in Nature, Myth and Dreams*