Over the last two decades, Dana Schutz has become known for complex canvases that convey emotions and psychological states and reveal the complications, tensions, and ambiguities of contemporary life.
This online presentation debuts five new paintings, also on view at Frieze New York, and brings you inside the artist’s studio process. Conceived together, these large-scale canvases depict various figures navigating post-calamitous situations and expand on Schutz’s singular, wholly inventive approach to both subject matter and painting.
Schutz creates her paintings through a combination of preparation and intuition. Using color as ground, and working wet-on-wet with oils, she develops her compositions in an evolving, responsive process, actively building up their surfaces.
The Arts, 2021
In The Arts, one of the five new canvases to debut here, a group of figures clamors in a futile effort to ascend a hill. One tries to light the way with a lantern, but instead casts a light downwards on a cockroach on the skull of a skeleton.
Detail view of The Arts in Dana Schutz’s studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
The other figures likewise engage in seemingly misguided tasks: an artist shown at the rear smells a flower and leans back on a palette, gazing up at a faint, anemic sun. The characters’ heads and upper bodies have an upright and high-minded appearance, but their lower halves are utterly debased.
This satirical quality of The Arts reflects Schutz’s interest in the social caricature found in the work of artists such as George Grosz and Otto Dix.
Dana Schutz delineates the composition of a new painting, Baggage, in her studio. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Sea Group, 2021
Sea Group depicts a huddle of figures standing on what appears to be an island made up of discarded jawbones and crutches. Intertwined like a nest or paint on a palette, the figures coalesce into an image made up of many connected parts.
Detail view of Sea Group in Dana Schutz’s studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Baggage, 2021
Baggage presents a solitary figure who looks like a professional on his way from one job to the next. The jumble of bodies and masklike faces recall the allegorical, carnivalesque scenes of James Ensor.
Dana Schutz in her studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Schutz works quickly and fluently, building up the rich, luminous surfaces of her canvases, sometimes with a thick impasto that gives her work depth and vibrancy.
Painting palette in Dana Schutz’s studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Dana Schutz’s studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
The Meeting, 2021
The Meeting features two figures in profile, recalling Assyrian wall reliefs or Egyptian hieroglyphs, who appear to be meeting at the end of the world and suspended in time. The sculptural quality of the figures stands in contrast to the lightness of the clouds and the chaos that surrounds them. Oblivious or resigned to their chaotic circumstances, the two nevertheless appear to recognize each other as partners or equals.
An open monograph displays Pablo Picasso’s Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race) (1922), 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Stacks of books in Dana Schutz’s studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Schutz draws from a tremendous visual knowledge of the history of painting that she freely synthesizes into her own unique painterly language. Among the influences seen in these works are the cloudlike corporeality of Robert Colescott’s figures, the built-up daubs of color of Oskar Kokoschka’s expressionist portraits, and other earlier references, including Giotto and Paolo Uccello.
The Ventriloquist, 2021
The Ventriloquist features a ventriloquist, sinister and calm, holding a puppet, screaming mutely and surrounded by fire—dualities held in tension in the composition.
In the face of the puppet, Schutz’s synthesis of Kokoschka can be seen: the daubs of color and masses of paint give the figure a painterly plasticity.
Dana Schutz in her studio, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt
You can see these paintings in person at Frieze New York, May 5–9, 2021.