🔗 Share this article

The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

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 Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.