Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Shocked NYC

Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.