The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Artist Who Outraged NYC

Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

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 black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society 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 the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.