The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Shocked NYC
The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.
Schutz's Approach
Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.
The Kiss by the artist.
Shift in Focus
In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
A Model by Dana Schutz.
Interpretation and Narratives
Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.
The 2017 Scandal
And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.
Aftermath and Recent Art
It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.