🔗 Share this article The Artist Dana Schutz Review: A Feast of Gloop from the Painter Who Shocked NYC The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them. Schutz's Approach Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick. Works in the First Gallery These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish. The Kiss by Dana Schutz. Shift in Focus In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed. Influences and Allusions This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works. A Model by the exhibitor. Interpretation and Narratives Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait. The 2017 Scandal And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork. Legacy and Current Work It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.