Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged New York
Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded 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, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.
Initial Exhibition Pieces
These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.
The Kiss by the artist.
Changing Themes
In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.
A Model by the exhibitor.
Meaning and Stories
Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.
The 2017 Scandal
And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester 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 biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.
Legacy and Current Work
This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably 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, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.
