The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Shocked New York

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, 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 artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience 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 art at the top tier.