🔗 Share this article The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged NYC Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them. The Artist's Technique Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate. Works in the First Gallery The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste. An Embrace by Dana Schutz. Shift in Focus In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed. Influences and Allusions This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, 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, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works. The Example by the exhibitor. Interpretation and Narratives Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait. The 2017 Scandal And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting. Legacy and Current Work It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.