🔗 Share this article The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Outraged New York The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them. The Artist's Technique Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick. Works in the First Gallery The works in the first gallery 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 creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste. The Kiss by Dana Schutz. Shift in Focus In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed. Influences and Allusions This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, 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 mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks. The Example by Dana Schutz. Meaning and Stories Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait. Controversy and Impact And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, 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. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting. Legacy and Current Work It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.