cutieful painting i saw by dana schutz ::
Schutz painted this emotionally charged composition as part of a group of subjects she called "self-eaters," imaginary characters who have the power to regenerate by consuming portions of their own bodies. In part, such a hallucinatory narrative might represent an analogue or allegory of painting itself, a practice that artists continue to reimagine through both regurgitation and reinvention. Here, Schutz brings into being two subjects with mask-like heads who, in her words, are "sort of consoling each other," or else "trying to feel what the other one is doing." Evoking touch rather than sight might contradict the notion that painting is a purely visual medium, but Schutz’s work appears both optically charged and sculpturally formed, constructed of worlds within worlds.
