The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged New York

The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through 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 surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in a 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 pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body 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 Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged 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 highest level.