The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Shocked NYC
Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through 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 focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.
Works in the First Gallery
The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.
An Embrace by Dana Schutz.
Shift in Focus
In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures 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 other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. 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 large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting 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, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds 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 corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.
Legacy and Current Work
This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.
