The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged New York

The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain 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 sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators 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. An activist picketed the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline 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. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.