🔗 Share this article

The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.