Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Shocked New York

The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.