Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Painter Who Outraged New York
The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.
Schutz's Approach
Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving 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 commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.
An Embrace by the artist.
Shift in Focus
In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.
A Model by the exhibitor.
Interpretation and Narratives
Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.
The 2017 Scandal
And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. 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 – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent 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 artwork.
Aftermath and Recent Art
It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. 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.
