🔗 Share this article

The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded 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 immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline 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. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.