🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about 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 shading, there’s plenty to engage you 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 populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation 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, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline 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 same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.