Marc Quinn Young Carnivore 2003

 
This is a portrait of the artist’s son as a baby. He has the chubby, baby-face of an infant at that stage between baby and toddler when they start to really explore the world around them.

The title of the work, Young Carnivore, suggests that the long fleshy object hanging from the child’s mouth is a piece of meat, but as children of this age are rather too young to be fed great big pieces such as this, we have to wonder if something else is happening. Could it even be the child’s own tongue that he is pulling out of his own mouth like some horrid act of naughtiness quite at odds with his angelic expression? Or maybe he is just chewing on a chicken bone. There is also a slight halo around the child’s head.