The Curate and the Corpse 1927 - 1930

Here we have "The Curate and the Corpse," an etching by Marc Chagall. Look closely and you'll notice how the entire scene is constructed from tiny hatched lines, like a dense thicket of marks. It's through this layering that Chagall conjures the textures and weight of the figures and objects. There's something unsettling about the tilted perspective. Everything feels precarious, as if on the verge of collapse. The horse and carriage loom large, dominating the composition. The curate, caught mid-gesture, appears to be falling, or floating. See the small white space around his head? It's like an aura, accentuating his vulnerability. Chagall's prints share an affinity with the dreamscapes of artists like Odilon Redon, who, like Chagall, conjured psychological states through evocative imagery and symbolic forms. It's this sense of the uncanny, the way Chagall embraces ambiguity and invites us to question our perceptions, that makes his work so enduring.