Dead Idiot , 2019
40 x 30 x 2 in (h x w x d)
oil on wood

A tiny antagonist buzzes over the skull of Paul Pretzer’s Dead Idiot. The painting was part of Mortality: A Survey of Contemporary Death Art. Curated by Donald Kuspit, and assisted by Robert Curcio, the exhibition was to be held at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2020, but was terminated due to Covid-19. Since the exhibition catalog had already been produced, the show’s virtual life was extended as the 2021 dArt cover feature, in the sense that the Curated Content project had also breathed life into it. If Pretzer’s Dead Idiot is a focus on mortality as an individual struggle, the Otto Dix Card Players (1920) in panel four exemplify its residual collective trauma.

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