Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged NYC
The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.
The Kiss by the artist.
Changing Themes
In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.
Inspirations and References
This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain 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 sprinkled the artworks.
The Example by the exhibitor.
Meaning and Stories
Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.
The 2017 Scandal
And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.
Aftermath and Recent Art
This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.
