The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Artist Who Outraged NYC

The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

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 stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.