The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Painter Who Shocked New York
Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.
Initial Exhibition Pieces
The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.
The Kiss by the artist.
Shift in Focus
In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
A Model by Dana Schutz.
Interpretation and Narratives
Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.
The 2017 Scandal
And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.
Legacy and Current Work
It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. 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, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.
