Console

Dana Schutz

2003 · Oil on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

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.

Artist

Dana Schutz

Date

2003

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Gift of Sonnet and Ian McKinnon, 2020