The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Shocked NYC
Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.
Initial Exhibition Pieces
These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.
The Kiss by Dana Schutz.
Shift in Focus
In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.
Inspirations and References
This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
The Example by Dana Schutz.
Meaning and Stories
Art this complex, intricate and symbolic 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 two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.
The 2017 Scandal
And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.
Aftermath and Recent Art
It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.
