Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged NYC
Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.
An Embrace by the artist.
Changing Themes
In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.
Inspirations and References
This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.
The Example by Dana Schutz.
Meaning and Stories
Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.
The 2017 Scandal
And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and some demanded 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 event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.
Legacy and Current Work
It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.
