🔗 Share this article

The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model 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 ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.