Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged NYC

The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim 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, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another presents a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. 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 public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.