The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Shocked New York

The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – 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 shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – 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 featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.