The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.
The Artist's Technique
Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists 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 layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.
An Embrace by Dana Schutz.
Shift in Focus
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 fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.
Inspirations and References
This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.
A Model by Dana Schutz.
Meaning and Stories
Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.
Controversy and Impact
And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.
Aftermath and Recent Art
This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. 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 highest level.
