Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Outraged NYC

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

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, 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 enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. 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 second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.