🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work 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 littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men 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 demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile 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 move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably 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 art at the highest level.