Ok so why all the effort for just a showpiece that you can’t buy? Well that isn’t exactly true. Note that each of the faces (the “nymph heads”) has a different expression on its face – something that needed to be reproduced on the watch. In gold, this frame also needed to be hand engraved. It needed place for the “frame” of faces to go around it – just as is the case in the Opera house. The dial wasn’t even around, but shaped more like a gear. This is an example of grand feu enameling. All hand painted, it needed to go through various baking processes at the end to make it just right. It took Swiss enamel artist Anita Porchet 3.5 months to complete the dial.
The ceiling is quite the epitome of Chagall’s style and was completed in 1964. You have to realize that the 200-meter-wide ceiling needed to be hand replicated on a 31mm wide watch dial. It was easy to tell that VC wanted to reproduce the ceiling on a watch dial in enamel.
I first wrote about this piece here where I was quickly able to decipher what Vacheron Constantin was up to. For the last few years, since 2007, Vacheron Constantin has held a partnership with the l’Opera de Paris (Paris Opera House), and is here making an additional claim on that relationship by reproducing the famous Marc Chagall ceiling from the opera house on a watch dial. More likely, the special March Chagall ceiling watch will be on permanent exhibition, traveling around to show off VC’s stuff. I guess they enjoy it too much to part with it? Maybe. Vacheron Constantin paid a lot of money to make this watch, and they are keeping it for themselves. Size: Small Folio.Nice watch, but you can’t buy it. This book exemplifies the wonderful color and imagery that Chagall can offer. After the new ceiling was unveiled, "even the bitterest opponents of the commission seemed to fall silent".
The images Chagall painted on the canvas paid tribute to the composers Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Berlioz and Ravel, as well as to famous actors and dancers. André Malraux, France's Minister of Culture wanted something unique for the Ceiling of the Paris Opera and decided Chagall would be the ideal artist. In a clear acetate sleeve with author and title in white lettering. Unclipped pictorial jacket has minor closed tear, light toning at extremities of the rear panel. The lithographs are in excellent condition. Thin horizontal streak across the lower front panel, light toning to the endpapers, otherwise fine. Original Lithograph frontispiece present. Burgundy cloth with scene on front panel.
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