The Frog that Wished to Make Herself as Big as the Ox 1927 - 1930

Marc Chagall pulled this etching of ‘The Frog that Wished to Make Herself as Big as the Ox’ out of a plate, using thin, scratchy lines to build up the tones and forms. Can you imagine him hunched over the metal, scraping away at the surface? I feel for Chagall here, trying to evoke a whole fable through this painstaking process. He’s using such simple means - just black lines on white paper - but look how much he manages to suggest! The way the ox looms, almost filling the frame, conveys its bulk and power. And those delicate lines describing the landscape hint at a world beyond. I think he's maybe telling us that sometimes, trying too hard to be something you're not, just leaves you feeling deflated, right? It reminds me a little bit of other etchers like Paula Rego, who also used this medium to tell unsettling stories. Artists, they're always riffing off each other, you know, carrying on the conversation across time. And in the end, it's up to us to keep those stories alive, to find our own meanings in them.