CHAPTER 5 | BACK TO THE TAIL EATERS

One pupil liked to draw a dog as a tail eater on the same paper.
Can you make up different tail eaters too?

Eating you own tail would be difficult for humans because we don’t have a tail and… where do you start eating yourself?

 

In drawings by the Romanian-American artist Saul Steinberg (1914-1999), a figure tries to finish the drawing of itself. But where did he start?? And where should he end up?? Steinberg draws something that is actually impossible. Therefore, this resembles the idea of the tail-eater who can never quite eat itself.

Freely redrawn from the original drawings by Saul Steinberg