These five works introduce one of more interesting thematic motifs in Chagall's art, the relationship between birds, beasts, lovers and artists. In The Village (1977; M. 917; with complimentary signature; top left), The Green Bird (1962; M. 354; with complimentary signature; center), and The Bay (1962; M. 356; lower right), Chagall uses the bird, either by itself or in combination with a lttle beast (horse, ram, goat), where the bird seems to symboliize the side of the lover or the artists whose spirit soars above the earthly world (ruled in The Bay by Leviathan, whose tail dwarfs the buildings in the village behind him and the trees in the foreground); in Paysage au Coq / Landscape with Rooster (1958; M. 208; lower left), a large blue-green rooster with a bouquet of flowers in his tail stands in the middle of the body of a naked woman; above him a bride stands underneath a traditional marriage canopy as used in Jewish weddings. The cock, a traditional symbol of lust and the delights of the flesh at least since the middle ages, functions rather differently than the bird carrying the lovers off into the skies to the right. In The Concert (1957; M. 176; with complimentary signature; top right), we see a scene that is almost like a variant on medieval or Renaissance depictions of heaven with the hosts of angels singing for the Virgin and her Son, but here it is a pair of lovers reclining in a small boat floaating down a river with the Eiffel Tower visible on the right and a mermaid swimming on the lower right while what may be a sea serpent peaceably coils about on the lower left. The choir includes a figure playing a harp as boatman, a cock top left, a ram to the right of him (in the orange area), and a bird in the yellow circle above the lovers and the harper, suggesting a dream of the total harmony of all thiings good and enjoyable. For full information on The Village, click here. For The Green Bird, The Bay, and Paysage au Coq, click here. For The Concert, click here.