🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

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 two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, 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 changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.