Jew with a Torah 1922 - 1923

This is Marc Chagall’s ‘Jew with a Torah,’ made with a black and white palette. I wonder, was it carved into wood, or linoleum? Either way, the artist’s hand seems to have glided, cutting and shaping the image into being. I love how Chagall's figures seem to float in this dreamlike space, like they are not quite bound by gravity. Look at how he used the white line to define and describe the image. I am thinking about the chicken there – like a memory, almost – pecking below the surface, under the man’s seat, under the Torah. And what’s that little hanging form? A key? A weight? Chagall's work always has this sense of folkloric storytelling; like he's pulling from a deep well of cultural memory, creating a world both familiar and strange. It's like peering into someone else's dream, where the symbols and narratives are just slightly out of reach. Artists keep up a conversation across time, a dialogue between each other’s experiments. Painting allows for ambiguity, and for multiple stories.