🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. 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 social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.