The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Artist Who Shocked NYC

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.