Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – earning her acclaim 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 aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.
Initial Exhibition Pieces
The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.
The Kiss by Dana Schutz.
Changing Themes
In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
The Example by the exhibitor.
Interpretation and Narratives
Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.
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 black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.
Aftermath and Recent Art
It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.
