🔗 Share this article Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Thick Paint from the Painter Who Outraged New York The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them. The Artist's Technique Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim 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 layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick. Initial Exhibition Pieces The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish. The Kiss 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 follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed. Influences and Allusions This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks. A Model by Dana Schutz. Meaning and Stories Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait. Controversy and Impact And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image 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. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting. Legacy and Current Work This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.