Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Outraged New York
The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.
An Embrace by Dana Schutz.
Changing Themes
In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.
A Model by the exhibitor.
Meaning and Stories
Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.
Controversy and Impact
And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse 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 profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.
Legacy and Current Work
It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.
