🔗 Share this article

Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show 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 – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours 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, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline 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. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.