🔗 Share this article

The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate 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 each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile 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 career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.