The Artist Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Gloop from the Artist Who Shocked New York

The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting 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 littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.

Black History Month is a reflection of the current political climate, so how do we revamp it?

12 Aug 2026

The Artist Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Gloop from the Artist Who Shocked New York

The Artist's Technique

Works in the First Gallery

Shift in Focus

Influences and Allusions

Meaning and Stories

The 2017 Scandal

Aftermath and Recent Art

July 2026 Blog Roll

May 2026 Blog Roll

April 2026 Blog Roll

March 2026 Blog Roll

February 2026 Blog Roll

January 2026 Blog Roll

December 2025 Blog Roll

November 2025 Blog Roll

October 2025 Blog Roll

September 2025 Blog Roll

August 2025 Blog Roll

Popular Posts

Sponsored News