The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, 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 figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.
Works in the First Gallery
The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. 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 turning everything to rubbish.
The Kiss by Dana Schutz.
Changing Themes
In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. 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 big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
A Model by the exhibitor.
Meaning and Stories
Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.
The 2017 Scandal
And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period 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 emotional, mournful painting.
Aftermath and Recent Art
It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.
