Finger snack 1965

Christian Attersee made this painting, Finger snack, with oil on canvas and with a touch of the surreal. It’s about the pleasure of making, and maybe the unsettling feeling of consumption. The four ‘finger snack’ motifs are painted in a way that gives us this beautiful texture. See the brushwork around the boxes, all those individual strokes of reds, blues, and purples? Attersee is building form, but he’s not trying to hide the process. It’s all there on the surface. I keep coming back to the contrast between the hyper-realism of the snacks and the more expressionistic, almost abstract brushstrokes of the boxes. It reminds me of Magritte, but with a playful, pop art twist. It’s a little bit disturbing, sure, but it’s also really funny and thought-provoking.