The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Gloop from the Painter Who Outraged NYC
Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.
The Artist's Technique
Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.
Works in the First Gallery
These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.
The Kiss by Dana Schutz.
Shift in Focus
In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.
Influences and Allusions
This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.
The Example by Dana Schutz.
Meaning and Stories
Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, 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 body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.
Legacy and Current Work
It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.
