🔗 Share this article

The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced 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 really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period 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 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 unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.