🔗 Share this article

The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, 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 generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism 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 such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene 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 same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.