Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Artist Who Outraged NYC

Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.