The Fox and the Goat 1927 - 1930

Marc Chagall's 'The Fox and the Goat' is an etching, and it’s all about the possibilities of mark-making. The whole image is built from a network of tiny lines, scribbles really, which, for me, speaks to art-making as a process of accumulation and layering. Look closely, and you'll see how the physical quality of the etched line creates the forms, and how they are used to describe light and shadow. The etching technique, with its bitten lines and textured surfaces, gives the image a tactile quality; you can almost feel the scratch of the needle on the plate, the bite of the acid. The scratches that describe the goat's fur, or the fox's cunning eyes, are so descriptive. It puts me in mind of other great printmakers like Käthe Kollwitz, who knew how to make such powerful and expressive images out of simple materials. Ultimately, it's a piece that invites us to linger, to look closely, and to find new meanings each time we return to it.