🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. 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 rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager 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 exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting 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 individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.