The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Outraged New York
The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.
Schutz's Approach
Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. 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 keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.
Works in the First Gallery
The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.
An Embrace by the artist.
Changing Themes
In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.
Inspirations and References
This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.
The Example by the exhibitor.
Interpretation and Narratives
Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, 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 artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other 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 angry at this emotional, mournful painting.
Legacy and Current Work
This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.
