Dana Schutz: Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly

Joe Lloyd | Studio International | 2nd October 2020

Schutz was embroiled in a fierce 2017 controversy over her painting of the black victim of racial violence. That experience seems not to have hindered her art. New paintings portray grotesque “uglies” in lurid colour, some engaged in frenzied action. These are works that provide information but seem to want the viewer to “finish the painting”. To summarise this complex work, the reviewer clutches at a phrase – “grotesque realism”.