Dana Schutz review – an orgy of gloop from the painter who outraged New York

Dana Schutz review – an orgy of gloop from the painter who outraged New York

Thomas Dane, London The artist, whose painting of Emmett Till caused a scandal, is back with a grotesque, cartoonish, deeply political commentary on American society Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. The American artist’s first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but there are some big messages smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them. Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick. Continue reading...