Dana Schutz Interview: How Do You Depict a Feeling?

New York-based Dana Schutz is widely considered one of the most talented painters of her generation. We visited the American artist in her Brooklyn-studio to talk about the inherent power and potential of paintings.
Schutz feels that her paintings come from language and its openness: “Like a phrase or a set of words that can begin to open up a space, that could begin to be a painting.” In this way, one of her recent paintings set off in the phrase “trouble in appearance,” which she tried to figure out how to represent pictorially: “Sometimes I think that the phrases can actually come more from a feeling, like how do you begin to depict a feeling?” Furthermore, Schutz believes that paintings often say more about us than about themselves, continually changing with every viewer and even with yourself when you look at them at different times and in different places: “They can continuously make and re-make meaning if they’re any good.”
Dana Schutz (b. 1976) is an American artist, known for her humorous, gestural paintings that take on specific - often unconventional - subjects or narrative situations as the point of departure. Solo exhibitions include Site Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, The Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal in Montreal, The Metropolitan Opera in New York and Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. She has participated in group exhibitions including at the Venice Biennial, MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Kunsthaus Zürich. Schutz’ work can be found in museums and public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Dana Schutz was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Brooklyn, New York in April 2019.
Camera: Jakob Solbakken
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Cover photo: A cropped version of ‘Self-Portrait Googling’, 2006 by Dana Schutz. Courtesy of the artist
Edited by: Klaus Elmer
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2019
Supported by Nordea fonden
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[@lisengel2498]

The paintings sing their strange, beautifull and chaotic songs from our life, our nightmares but maybe also about our dreams and hope of love and beauty and life - and the colorfull paintins sing and cry and create special spaces of deep experience

[@dianehong1217]

The background music is so wrong here. This ubiquitous meditation music is so tiresome. Her work has such great energy and the music is so antithetical, it is truly disturbing.

[@ThePooper3000]

Serene meditation music, or smooth classical or jazz music in videos about artists is so fucking overplayed. It's starting to get grating.

[@Audion]

The music dominates this edit when it should only perfume the air.

[@covechgo]

I really like her paintings.

[@minyoo4437]

I love love what she says! I love my art too. Art makes me cry.

[@isaiasxd4453]

What a beatifull soul 💐

[@nqkdjr]

She is so amazing.

[@isaiasxd4453]

Wooooooooo 💥

[@thomasbriaud9123]

Why do i love the rythme of her sentences so much

[@AI-xs4fp]

Thank you for this slice of solace.

[@kydop6128]

Her work really reminds me of Philip Guston's paintings. The weird positions in which her figures are in really reminds me of Guston's figures. Really cool video!

[@TheDreadfulCurtain]

I think more like Peter Saul

[@moppenboek]

After hearing her talk. am in love now

[@catclemons614]

this channel is the fuckin best, thank you guys

[@dustyeyer3573]

More Dana please! Great video, thank you.

[@ricardopickman]

Her paintings remain me to Internet Explorer , they have some 90's flair that makes them very cool (and in my case very inspiring).

[@mehrdadmohajer3847]

I like your L.CH , mostly bco Contemporary Art & Artists. Congrat. & lot of success🍻 Dear Dana, needless to say you are very talented Artist. I enjoy your works & happy to meet you in this manner .Your " Sculpture Projects " can be another break through. Well down & hopefully i get to see you + your Works here in Hamburg Germany 🌷

[@Flux_One]

I agree 100% that Art is problem solving

[@suzannedesylva3805]

Loudness of the music competes with the dialogue

[@JSolhoff]

Thanks for sharing !

[@aquiestapedro]

OMG such and amazing artist!!!

[@gregorylent]

glad i watched this, thanks

[@DaphneKnouse]

its not easy for artists 2 articulate their work. jeez. @ commenters give her a break

[@roman2011]

Wow. Prolific production of work.

[@maitreboissier2510]

wow

[@tateboley457]

Dana Schutz's work is so inspiring and I'm always trying to hear more about what she thinks. But please stop making interviews that create a bias around what we are seeing through post-production tropes. When we are supposed to hear the interviewer's question we instead hear a synthy ambient interlude that evokes melancholic reflection. When Schutz laughs, it's not like we hear someone on the other end of the interview laughing with her- there is no conversation, just silence. It feels clinical and sentimental as if viewed from afar. By cutting out the interviewer, we lose a sense of organic conversation. Dana Schutz deserves a glorious interview like the Bacon and Sylvester one. But even those interviews throw in eerie horror noises. I guess i just hate post production editors because they rely on casting an evocative mood for the sake of catching views rather than genuinely digging into what the artist thinks and feels. For those that love the artist's work and would die to ask them questions about their theories and practices please just have an actual conversation that goes more in depth.

[@Jacob32905]

It felt genuine enough to me. At least the editors left room for the artist to express her idea's. Most content on KZbin about the creative process just feels like a well produced clothing brand commercial or something. And others use the ambient noise and carefully curated shots to distract the viewer from the fact that they aren't an artist at all but rather a content creator using art as a platform to make it big in the social media world.

[@artistrajubabu3535]

i like your subject & way of expression

[@themaster-zz1tb]

Are these artists given some command to talk in this way for a doc. ? Hahaha everyone talks so slowly in the similar way as if acting.

[@audreyh6628]

Have you ever been interviewed? It is extremely awkward

[@MS-mp9om]

I think the pauses show that this is the opposite of acting. They're actually taking time to think of concise answers, not just speaking from a script.

[@Amelia-yu6ii]

they dont have media training, unlike a lot of people you see being interviewed

[@upsoun]

respect

[@nickthabit420]

What is this music? All rise...

[@gvoid]

She looks like she's related to Andy Warhol

[@me-oo1fr]

4:10-5:11

[@me-oo1fr]

5:57?

[@po4146]

is she going to exhibit in Louisiana

[@Cixelated]

This is Louisiana , Denmark

[@luc7937]

Love

[@nishkam9588]

Still not addressing the system of intentions, yes she is very good at depicting ideas, artists know how . What are you saying to the viewer? Why, is the woman laying down in the boat?What is her content. Too ambiguous Dana. I do like your work, especially size of canvas and colors .

[@jakethehuman7]

nishka m it doesn't always matter, she said she's laying down because she's asleep...

[@harikatragadda]

Its really up to the viewer what to make out of it.

[@duart310]

Nice and vapid, just the way i like it 😀

[@hd-xc2lz]

Yeah? What's more vapid than comment board snark?

[@losfeliz3485]

insufferable.

[@wewantraw]

EWWWWWW!! COLONIZER

[@smartidea2987]

very much disgusting, silly and artificial. this artist needs a lot to learn to be natural and sensible.

[@Amelia-yu6ii]

l m a o

[@audreyh6628]

ok bro

[@konradfitzgerald]

Smart Idea let’s see your art

[@thunbergmartin]

"Disgusting" is a really harsh and hardly called for expression here, a hurtful hyperbolic expression. On the contrary I find it very natural and sensible the way she talks, I personally like a bit of rambling, murmur of uncensored thoughts and processes; and I find it very unsatisfying when artist presents themselves in interviews though aforisms and statements, as if the know and control the way their art operate. In my book that is the opposite to natural and sensible.