🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute 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 one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open 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 provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men 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 personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.