New exhibitions of works by Marc Chagall and Honoré Daumier show the wild imagination and audacity of French modern art
France invented modern art. The French Revolution gave art in Paris a courage and appetite for experiment that vivify it like chocolate in a brioche. By the early 20th century, the city had become the unquestioned centre of all that was new. Picasso dismantled reality in his cubist still lifes. Brancusi created dream images of fantastic birds. Neither of these French art heroes was born in France; it was where you had to go to be truly modern.
Marc Chagall, whose art is celebrated at Tate Liverpool from next month, was drawn to Paris in 1911 from his native Russia. He was instantly influenced by its buzz of art movements, from cubism to fauvism, though he denied belonging to any one tendency. His magic-realist paintings use the fractured vision and expressive colours pioneered by modern artists in Paris to imagine a fabulous version of his Russian Jewish childhood. His genius is at once very Russian and very French.
The daring of modern art was pioneered by bohemian rebels. Honoré Daumier, whose drawings and paintings are at the Royal Academy this autumn, went to prison for caricaturing the French king and dedicated his art to championing the weak. His grotesque style helped lay the foundations for the French experiment.
What do these artists have in common? Wild imagination, freedom and audacity: a tricolour of artistic greatness.
• Mark Chagall is at Tate Liverpool from 8 June-6 October.
Honoré Daumier opens at the Royal Academy, London, in October