Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged New York

The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

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 grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. 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, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.