Dana Schutz
Imagine Me and You
Petzel
January 10 – February 23, 2019
Dana Schutz: Imagine Me and You
Petzel
January 10 – February 23, 2019
Dana Schutz has enjoyed a rather fervent following almost since day one of her career, extolled alike by critics, collectors, artists, and ordinary viewers. Multiple artists have pointed out her work to me as an example of someone who “can really paint”. On a recent Saturday, viewing her show at Petzel, one could not help but note that the gallery was nearly overflowing with excited admirers expressing their barely contained pleasure aloud. While I can appreciate, even applaud their enthusiasm; I must admit that for me, while promise abounds, her work falls short.
I have written briefly about Schutz before, commenting on her painting of Emmett Till in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, Open Casket, which was at the center of a controversy about whether artists have the right to appropriate stories outside their own culture. I, too, criticized Open Casket, not for appropriating its subject, but for aestheticizing its subject. While I was speaking at the time specifically of this work, I think this goes to the larger issue I have with her work.
Dana Schutz
Mountain Group, 2018
Oil on Canvas
120 x 156 inches
What do I mean by aestheticizing the subject? Let’s look at Mountain Group, 2018, one of the largest of the paintings in the most recent exhibition at 120 x 156 inches. In the lower right, a dour faced kneeling woman is working on a painting of snow-capped mountains. In front of her a dozen different figures are either standing in for, or blocking her view of, the mountains. There are a couple of birds (seagulls?), one in the upper left, the other just over the artist’s shoulder in the lower right, and both birds appear to be either upchucking or regurgitating, take your pick. Four black ladders enter the image from the bottom, but although a figure appears to be clutching at one of them, strangely they are barely grounded in the picture, the space between the four of them and the mountain unarticulated. The abstracted figures are handled in different ways so as, I assume, to allude to artists that have influenced Schutz, although these references, aside from Philip Guston, Max Beckmann, and perhaps Maurice Sendak, are vague. The colors are typical for the artist – rather hot burnt oranges, pomegranate reds, and Pthalo greens floating over a background of pale blues and pinks generously mixed with white. The brushwork, too, is what we have come to expect from the artist; broad, heavily laden strokes, most often applied wet on wet with an almost preternatural assurance. As described the image of her artistic heroes (or critics), precariously piled before the supplicant artist kneeling at their feet, would suggest a super-weighted scene fraught with anxiety. Yet such is not the case. Rather, as with Open Casket, the proposed subject has little if any psychological resonance, and the viewer’s attention is transferred almost instantly to the exceptional paint handling. Such is the case throughout. Dramatic titles not withstanding – Washing Monsters, 2018, Trouble and Appearance, 2019, Painting in a an Earthquake, 2019 – and regardless of the artist’s purported subject, the paintings all resonate at the same wavelength, emotionally reminiscent of a particularly soothing warm bath. This disconnect between image and emotion was an issue in Schutz’s work prior to this show, as witnessed in another of her paintings shown in the Whitney Biennial, Elevator, 2017, where we find that despite a composition smashing people and giant insects into a desperately confined space, the image before us mysteriously fails to evoke even the slightest claustrophobic twinge. What is more, as with the ambitiously scaled Mountain Group, while the even larger Elevator at 144 x 180 inches is undeniably big, it is lacking in any feeling of monumentality. Here again disconnect between image and emotion is the cause, because the perception of monumentality is an effect not of physical size, but of psychological weight, of mass not volume.
Dana Schutz
Elevator, 2017
Oil on Canvas
144 x 180 inches
The work’s lacking psychological mass is repeatedly highlighted in its inability to convey the physical effects of gravity. Things are where they are, but do not rest on anything. Returning to Mountain Group, the ladders are neither on the ground nor resting against the mountain. Our heroine, the mountain painter, is not kneeling on the mountain, and neither is her painting leaning against it. The large mountain group rests not on the mountain, but hovers in front of it. Conversely, because there is no gravity, the bird in the upper left does not soar above the ground, but is merely stuck in place in a shallow sky.
Dana Schutz
Painting in an Earthquake, 2019
Oil on Canvas
94 x 87.75 inches
This is endemic to the artist’s work. In the show’s other overtly autobiographic canvas, Painting in a an Earthquake, the woman’s right foot is not on the sphere (and her left foot is off the edge of the painting, perhaps indicative of the artist’s self awareness of the problem in question), her left hand rests not on her hip, but slightly in front of it, one of her right hands (the painting depicts her with two left and two right hands) wants to be holding the wall in place but merely sits in front of it, and the walls, books, cups, and various objects are not falling down, only floating in place. Even the woman’s ponytail defies gravity, leaning ever so slightly to the right. Once again we can marvel at Schutz’s skills at technique and composition, but the work’s lacking gravity, therefore lacking the possibility that things are going to actually fall down, also undermines any possibility of drama.
Dana Schutz
Beat Out the Sun, 2018
Oil on Canvas
94 x 87.5 inches
With another artist, the inability to convey emotions commensurate with their imagery might well be disqualifying. But the mesmerizing allure generated by Schutz’s aforementioned innate skill manipulating a viscous palette is, undeniably, intoxicating. On occasion, she can muster these skills to almost stunning effect, such as in Beat Out the Sun, 2018, where a gang of men appear to advance on a strangely shadowed Sun that presents as having a dimensionality well beyond the people or distant mountain range in the painting. And while this is an especially strong work, it also underscores the artist’s default solution, as well as her weakness. In every case, where what is required is a specificity of emotional or psychological or even intellectual realization, the artist settles for, and we are handed, a plate of butter frosting instead. This even extends, in the end, to the colors themselves, for absent the wrangling of her thoughts into clarity, the colors find themselves in service of a successful conclusion over one whose tonality is forced into obedience to its content which, in turn, limits her palette to being oddly nostalgic, an echo of the work of artists who have come before. Perhaps the artist’s self-awareness of this problem is what the regurgitating birds in Mountain Group allegorically reference.
So, for me, while Schutz continues to become a better technician, the paintings themselves remain facile. No matter however much her paint handling is a true pleasure to behold and her subject matter ambitious, on a deeper level – psychologically, emotionally – until she reaches for the shovel to dig deeper rather than a brush to paint over, her work will be as pretty and lightweight as a helium balloon, on the verge of floating away with a puff of air.
