The Cobbler and the Banker 1927 - 1930

Marc Chagall made "The Cobbler and the Banker," using etching, a process that's all about inking and wiping, revealing an image through labor, like life itself. The marks here are agitated, frenetic—look at the cobbler’s face, a tangle of lines that somehow coalesce into a wild expression. The stark contrast emphasizes the drama, the struggle, maybe even the absurdity of the cobbler’s existence compared to the banker. The scraping and hatching, the sheer physicality of the medium, becomes a metaphor for the cobbler's work, hands constantly moving, creating, repairing. It makes you wonder, who is richer here? You see a similar density of line and emotion in the prints of someone like Käthe Kollwitz, who also used the medium to explore the human condition. With art, it's never about fixed meanings, but about what gets stirred up in the process.