Dana Schutz Artist Profile
1976-Present
Painting and Sculpture
Contemporary/ Abstraction
Brooklyn, New York
Education: Cleveland Institute of Art (BFA) // Columbia University School of the Arts (MFA)
Exhibitions: Fight in an Elevator at Petzel Gallery in NY, Teeth Dreams and Other Supposed Truths at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin, Frank from Observation at LFL Gallery in NY and If the Face Had Wheels at the Neuberger Museum of Art in NY.
Work on view: The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts (MA), The Museum of Contemporary Art (CA)
Dana Schutz exposes the present conditions of life on an imperfect planet in extremely vivid ways, while still keeping the aesthetic details of her paintings a top priority. She frequently depicts figures acting in violet or creative activities, shows contradictory situations and includes elaborate narratives throughout her work.
Born in 1976 and raised in Livonia, Michigan, a small town just outside of Detroit, she began painting at the age of 15. Schutz began her education at the Cleveland Institute of Art and completed her MFA at Columbia University in 2002.
First sparking the art world’s attention with her debut exhibition Frank from Observation at the LFL Gallery (the Zach Feur Gallery from 2000 to 2016), Schutz struck her viewers with her intense and imaginative fictional subject matter. Using ‘Frank’ a middle-aged pink male as her main figure who represents her own imagination of what the last man on earth might look like. Creating a perplexing narrative is very important to Schutz, and her subject matter is a response to what is happening in the world rather than autobiographical. On how she creates, Dana Schutz says she things of adjectives and information. She starts with specific language on the subject that she wants to target, and constructs paintings from that language.
Schutz’s career took a turn with her painting Open Casket in 2016 which was inspired by a photograph of the mutilated corpse of Emmet Till. Till was a 14 year old African American boy who was brutally murdered in 1955 after false allegations that he flirted with a white woman. Schutz was criticized for being racially insensitive, and many members of the community felt that it wasn’t her place as a white woman to portray this subject matter. Others felt it was immoral for her to use black suffering as a means for profit, to which Schutz responded by never selling the painting for a profit.
Although this seemed to be a major setback for her career at the time, Dana Schutz came back stronger than ever with her work at Petzel Gallery in January of 2019. Her newest works have been said to be some of her best by critics, recognized for their aesthetic improvements and great detail. Schutz adresses the struggle of being an artist, especially one who creates work designed to spark conversation and controversy. In painting “Painting is an Earthquake” she references this struggle, depicting a crumbling world at the hands of an artist with a paintbrush.
Dana Schutz is married to the artist Ryan Johnson, and continues to create some of her best work yet alongside her husband and child while living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Sources:
artnet. “Dana Schutz.” Artnet, Artnet, 2018, www.artnet.com/artists/dana-schutz/.
Boyd, Kealey. “A Portrait of Artist Dana Schutz’s Son Reframes Issues of Consent and Appropriation.” Hyperallergic, Hyperallergic, 19 June 2018, hyperallergic.com/447550/hamishi-farah-dana-schutzs-portrait-appropriation-consent-liste-art-fair/.
Loos, Ted. “After the Quake, Dana Schutz Gets Back to Work.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/arts/design/dana-schutz-painting-emmett-till-petzel-gallery.html.
Schjeldahl, Peter. “Dana Schutz’s Paintings Wring Beauty from Worldwide Calamity.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/dana-schutzs-paintings-wring-beauty-from-worldwide-calamity.
Smith, Roberta. “Dana Schutz’s New Paintings Just Might Be Her Best.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/arts/design/dana-schutz-review-petzel-gallery.html.
Speidel, Klaus. “Dana Schutz’s ‘Open Casket’: A Controversy around a Painting as a Symptom of an Art World Malady.” Spike Art Magazine, 25 Mar. 2017, www.spikeartmagazine.com/en/articles/dana-schutzs-open-casket-controversy-around-painting-symptom-art-world-malady.
artnet. “Dana Schutz.” Artnet, Artnet, 2018, www.artnet.com/artists/dana-schutz/
