Chagall Was ‘A Colossal Mama’s Boy’

A new biography of the painter says that he freely went from one parental figure to another to another for sustenance and nourishment. “Everyone embraced him, nursed him, held him aloft.” He was also, it seems, “a social climber and a prince of self-pity. He thrived in a bloody century that killed many friends… But he saw himself as Christ on the cross.”