The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Artist Who Outraged New York

Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

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 a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.