Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Shocked New York

Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character 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.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other 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 people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.