The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Outraged NYC

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.