Twister Mat
Sword Rack
Death Comes To Us All
Kineko Ivic, in introducing the painting of Dana Schutz to me, described her work being painted by a person who is "obviously a genius." I looked her up and wasn't convinced. It's witty and smart but for me it kind of echoes too greatly of early 20th surrealism. It has a similar wimsy to that of Marcel Dzama but also shares Dzama's certain lack of cerebral lack of engagement. Where Dzama is an illustrative painter to the point of seeming to be an illustrator stuck in the art world loop, Dana Schutz seems to be milking Dali-esque devices like strange landscapes inhabited by wierd objects. Even though, she's young and important painter in the 2006 art world. Which either makes me think the art world is messed up or I'm just not understanding something that everyone obviously is... so I started looking for positives in her work. In Death Comes To Us All I really enjoy the elegantly rendered hand holding a cigarette with the elegant mess of a torso on the figure; that yellow pylon and the matching street stripe complementing one another like bricks and mortar. I began to enjoy her lyrical rendering juxtaposed against her lyrical messes, even though they heavily relying on de Kooning devices. But I'm still not hailing her as an obvious genius. Her art, like so much art, is still investigating the bleakness, the strangeness of life, the inevitableness of death in life, and just more or less offers little hope. Perhaps that's why the art world acknowledge's her as important; perhaps the world of 2006 in general can identify with those ideas than their positive counterparts.
Images from: Saatchi Gallery
