The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Artist Who Shocked New York

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes 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 figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation 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 mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork 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 Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.