🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters 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 layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain 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 more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.