Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Shocked New York

The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (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 bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.