Erika Verzutti’s insatiable appetite for art history
Evan Moffitt, Art Basel
November 2021
Nothing in the world is hungrier than a desiring gaze. At least that’s a precept of second-wave feminist art theory, which proposed that looking at art should be understood as a form of consumption. According to this view, the female nudes in baroque and Renaissance paintings are succulent meals cooked up by male artists for other, richer men to devour. There’s much truth to this version of history, though it tends to ignore that women have appetites, too. And Erika Verzutti is a very hungry artist. An omnivorous lover of art history, she metabolizes its many styles and references in her sculptures made of bronze, concrete, plaster, and papier-mâché. […]