The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Shocked NYC

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

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

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period 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 individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.