Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Gloop from the Painter Who Outraged NYC

The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. 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.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, 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 shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds 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 golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. 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 continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.