glutton

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on October 31, 2017 at 11:20am

Curator’s Comments: 

I came across Glutton today, on Halloween, and find it to be an as frightening image as any ghost or monster. The ghoulish black head devouring the countryside patently represents our collective dark urges for consumption.  While your accompanying note specifically references a Communist villain, for me the power of the painting is in the archetypal depiction of greed.  The darkening of the eerie and unnatural blue sky suggests nature itself, or geologic forces, may be complicit in the pillaging and destruction of the natural environment.  While the rolling hills and farmland by contrast are idyllic, it could alternatively be inferred the mechanical modification of virgin woods for human agri-business is another level of despoiling. It is a powerful image, making the viewer contemplate our precarious relationship to the earth.