Dana Schutz: Jupiter’s Lottery at DAVID ZWIRNER

James Kalm, after nearly twenty years of producing the Kalm Report, sometimes gets the feeling that he’s the eccentric uncle, with the video camera. In the case of Dana Schutz, your correspondent has been covering her work since 2007(?) In the interim, Schutz has kept pushing and probing, what the relevance of contemporary painting could be. With “Jupiter’s Lottery”, Shutz fills the massive double gallery space of Davis Zwirner with an exhibition of huge expressionistic paintings, and ambitiously gnarly bronze sculpture. Taking a seeming turn to a darker ground, and illusions to historic painters both classic and modern, these works continue the goofy-grotesque narratives that have established Schutz as one of the present-day’s painter stars. Links to some of Schutz’s previous Kalm Reports are below. This program was recorded November 2nd, and 4th, 2023. A musical introduction is provided by Syd Hudson @SydHudsonMusic. #jameskalmreport #jameskalmroughcut #lorenmunk
Dana Schutz “Stand By Earth Man” opening at Zach Feuer (LFL)
• Dana Schutz "Stand By ...
Dana Schutz Missing Pictures at ZACH FEUER
• Dana Schutz Missing Pi...
Dana Schutz Piano in the Rain at FRIEDRICH PETZEL GALLERY
• Dana Schutz Piano in t...
Dana Schutz “Fight in an Elevator” at PETZEL
• Dana Schutz "Fight in ...
Dana Schutz "Imagine Me and You" at PETZEL
• Dana Schutz "Imagine M...

[@nonstopdemo]

Thank you Kate!

[@buzzbain3348]

Thank you Loren. Your video reports make my day!

[@thirdrockjul2224]

Thank you Kate! ❤

[@RonaldGosses]

So AWESOME ! Again, thanks for showing!

[@KBD-ONE]

You're the best. Didn't get to see it yet

[@tonsfocus]

Thank you James, thanks Kate!

[@kreshnikxhiku4133]

Thank you James

[@user-ld7qg8gp3k]

Thank you!!! So good to see the impressions here in Germany. Ans special thanks for the close ups

[@nealjonmurphy]

Oh boy new Dana Schutz.thank you sir.

[@ryanbubnis8297]

So good. Thanks for sharing, James!

[@RivkaPotchebutzkyArt]

Thank you!!!!

[@somemovingpictures]

Do you think the people attending the opening know that there are paintings on the walls?

[@jameswelsh7789]

😂

[@jameskalm]

Vaguely...JK

[@artbyty]

It’s ok for people to just socialize while being around art. It’s a celebration of life. It’s not necessary to be silent. It’s ok to talk over Mozart. It’s ok to walk on a hand made rug. Look. Talk. Laugh. That’s the whole point of art. It’s a fulcrum. It makes people be people. The universe necessitates it.

[@flogusgladly5370]

I see some of the gesturing of Philip Guston - great show - monumental

[@michaelrowe1907]

Love these Paintings and sculptures. Yes l can see Guston in her work , but wait ... Picasso and Beckman and Dana Schutz, all of these and more. Love ❤️ her work . Another brilliant presentation THANK YOU KATE and JAMES. Don't stop doing this l will be lost . Michael in Melbourne

[@selwynr]

Yes, and Beckmann taught Guston and Picasso influenced them all.

[@CHR588]

James this was so thrilling with a great Big show by a great painter with the battery dying so exciting! You always look where I want you to look you examine the work as I do when I’m there in person. Thank you so so so much. 🙏 🎨

[@jameskalm]

Thanks @Zarasmiths for your comments, I try...JK

[@slipton6493]

Monumental show! What a treat! Thank you James and Kate!

[@jazw4649]

Wow-ee-wow-wow!! ❤

[@marcsalz6056]

In addition to seeing some of Philip Guston’s work here, the Mexican muralists and James Ensor also come to mind. An impressive well painted show. Thanks James and Kate.

[@jackbinnie-or5po]

Thank you for sharing this show. 🙂 Lovely works. Reminds me off some of ken kiff's paintings as well like you said Philip Guston.

[@jameskalm]

Ken Kiff, a painter I love, y0u must be British...

[@jackbinnie-or5po]

Indeed I am from across the pond. Sorry For taking the longest in replying...

[@arjayfritzponcardasart]

wowwwww what a wonderful report on one of the leading contemporary figurative painters. Thanks, James! Love from the Philippines.

[@brittarafie4785]

Wonderful show! Thank you for bringing it to us. Thank you James and Kate

[@selwynr]

Thanks heaps for this! Brava to her on a spectacular show! In recent years she's emerged as Guston's most original, surprising and ambitious disciple. Where she breaks away from him, her wriggle room, is in her rich, unexpected palette and a larger cast of characters - more women, Guston rarely painted them. Plus, she's still young and will work through her major influence over time, and I guess the sculptures are a part of this process - looks like she's been looking at de Kooning sculptures as well. The paintings superficially have a 'late paintings' look, but again that's a matter of late Guston informing the work. Another strategy of overcoming her Guston crush is uping the ante - some of these paintings are so spectacularly, apocalyptically, goofily grotesque that you do wonder if they will be of lasting aesthetic value, but what else is one of the most exciting painters in the world to do as we all wobble on the precipice of global collapse and extinction? And no one will look at paintings on a dead planet, so the shrieking, mannered, rambunctious lunacy and gargantuan grotesquerie of these paintings clamor to be looked at NOW - there is no future that these works gesture towards because they're pitched at such a level of comic horror that the next step would be a plunge into collapse, madness, diabolical, cacophonous buffoonery - now there's a thought. Let's she if she dares go there - or retreats to safer ground (I kinda hope not - because our leaders seem hell-bent on charging headlong into the abyss and can you paint a nice still life as the world burns? Well, perhaps THAT would be the ultime middle finger to the psycopaths devouring and waging war on our collective future - not that they're listening - capitalistic and imperialistic psycopaths don't, no matter how loud we scream or paint. Also, I wonder if she's read Nathaniel West? Ralph Ellison? There's something of their nightmarish comic grotesquerie here too.

[@danielkunkel3630]

I thought the same things- DeKooning Clamdiggers and post 1970 Guston...I hope she doesn't stray too far from her earlier jelly bean palette, I thought her color sense from that period was a great part of her charm...Really ambitious work though!

[@danielkunkel3630]

Some Kyle Staver chiaroscuro in there as well? Just a high speed blender of style and quotation, she must never sleep!

[@ericwhite3327]

And I wouldn’t say Guston without DiChirico Dana is employing the “piles of stuff” device (incl. canvas, stretchers, etc) I was also struck by the grotesque and crude aesthetic and saw as a reflection of the shitstorm we are living through. Not that I could afford one but I’d find most of these hard to live with.

[@anthonymorton3074]

Tusen takk kate 🎉

[@Cam2Art]

I would say that Dana's influences predate Guston, that she is primarily influenced by Ensor and Soutine.

[@AI-xs4fp]

Guston, Ensor, Soutine...it is Dana's baton now.

[@Nosbert]

Thank you for sharing as always James! greetings from up north! (Montreal) btw, was that Jerry @6:09 ? xD two favorites in one video! what a treat! Thank you Kate!

[@samjgardner]

Guston, Beckman and maybe later Paula Rego? Thanks Kate!

[@robertspies4695]

This work captures the anxiety we feel about politics, war and the future of the planet. It is therefore unpleasant for me to view. The sculptures just seem for the most part chaotic and freakish though I agree with James that the smaller sculptures seem more cohesive.

[@garywillis7467]

Again thank you James (and Kate?) I enjoyed the bravura and physicality of the the paint - clay work. Phillip Guston references indeed - also Tracey Emin’s bronzes - The problem any thinking figurative painter faces is the politics of representation - and ‘Cancel Culture’ these are issues Neo Rauch’s work also faces - whatever’s- Bravo to Jupiter’s triumph of the times - G

[@sesvaoffice8331]

only a supported established artist can confidently invest the time and lot of $s to make this type of monumental art. wonder how much of it has sold and whether the gallery has acquired the works. interesting. thanks J&K

[@Sisa61]

Love your vids! Thank you Kate. (Who is Kate?)

[@jameskalm]

Kate is the Executive Producer, and the Love of my life...

[@anawieder5003]

I saw the Guston Show at the National Gallery, It was amazing, I think it was unfair to label him as racist because Guston was Jewish and the KKK went after Jews too, burning synogogues and Jewish owned stores, Maybe not as much as Black people but still significant, The harm they caused to Jews and Asians should not be forgotten, Also in addition to Guston I'm getting Robert Colescott vibes here

[@jameskalm]

Nice to hear from you Ana. I'd recommend that you checkout a talk given by his daughter Musa Mayer, to get her insights in to this whole subject...JK kzbin.info/www/bejne/laPWi2iafJKjZsU

[@picturepicture6990]

I'd hazard the claim that Schutz is the most important living western painter. Every show contains examples of outright genius. The nihilistic, macabre, and ironic sense of humor and contradicting seriousness of approach produce paintings that accurately document the splintering and schizoid consiousness of the first world. To show these paintings now (even the weak ones) is nauseating. I wonder how she feels. The paintings hardly let on to her inner state they seem more like mirrors or oracles. More Dana give us more!!

[@OlafSager]

It's always nice when an artist can share her post-traumatic experiences with us. In my opinion, the shitstorm over her 2017 Emmet Till painting was very inappropriate.

[@sitahsinrva]

big Condo vibes, as if the approach to create was sprung by the motion of the next stroke- How pre conceived are these works from start to finish?

[@msolbakken]

Seems to be riffing on George Condo to some extent.

[@jameswelsh7789]

Nah, Guston! And pictures Artists (Salle, Bickerton, Condo) been talking about figurative / Cartooning boundaries for years.

[@jameskalm]

@@jameswelsh7789 Lets not forget Judith Linhares one of the original "Bad Painters" from the 1978 New Museum show by the same name artcritical.com/2019/03/15/dennis-kardon-on-judith-linhares/ ...JK

[@jameswelsh7789]

I arrived in September’82 but I remember Salle being described as “Bad Painting” I’ll search Judith, never heard of her. Lois lane and Ida Appleborg were the proto-pictures artists that we’re still being mentioned along with Salle and Schnabel that fall.

[@readbetweenthelineslll1635]

Busy, articulate surface. But that's all I get from it. Though, it is interesting for a moment.

[@dimitrikozyrev1838]

Bad painting became a norm. Exiting times we are living in. Ask yourself a question, do you want to live with these works the rest of your life?!

[@reynaldoaranda8536]

The composition is evidently Guston.

[@robertalenrichter]

I get a Condo feeling, perhaps blended with Georg Grosz.

[@beedeeuniko]

👋🏼❤

[@robertalenrichter]

The sculptures are more interesting than the paintings. The whole point about Guston's work is that it's beautiful, despite the iconography. There's nothing wilful, strained or grotesque about it.

[@KBD-ONE]

That list of paintings and sculptures floor plan is not that hard to read. Makes me wonder how complicated your paintings are. And liking specific colors doesn't have to mean she copied Guston. That's not how it works. We just paint how we paint.

[@jameskalm]

Hey @KBD-ONE "Makes me wonder how complicated your paintings are." If you're interested you can check out one of my paintings that was published in the New York Times in September...www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/t-magazine/new-york-galleries-art-issue.html

[@KBD-ONE]

@@jameskalm I guess the fonts were too small

[@jameskalm]

@@KBD-ONE Yeah, and I need glasses as it is...JK

[@sublimeister9630]

That’s one fucked up hematoma… She’s moving to a more Expressionist style like Kokoschka, Nolde and Beckmann. 🙏😄

[@zissou6928]

What a scam. Feels like a twilight zone episode where everyone's pretending this is something important

[@richardmundy4288]

God, I hate receptions/openings...not many really interested in the art.

[@judyriola]

The very least you can do when reviewing an artist, especially the incomparable Dana Schutz, is LEARN HOW TO PRONOUNCE THEIR NAME!

[@torblixa7760]

WOW

[@TD-qi2rw]

Thank you Kate !

[@reynru]

Thank you Kate!