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

The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done 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 art at the top tier.