🔗 Share this article

The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – 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 losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures 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 scene filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. 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 large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.