The Artist Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Shocked NYC

The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, 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 portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation 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. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.