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

Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation 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 other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.