Dana Schutz

Held at Zach Feuer Gallery from November 23, 2002, to January 13, 2003,[15] Schutz's exhibition Frank from Observation focuses on Frank: a middle-aged, pink male.[16] In this exhibition, Frank acts as Schutz's imagination, imparting Schutz's idea of what the last man on Earth might look like, if she were the last observer.[17] Schutz describes Frank as: "a character that I invented. He was the last man on earth and I was the last audience and his last witness. He would pose for me and I would make other people and events out of him."[18]

One interpretation of Schutz's exhibit is the chance to start anew; no laws, no society, and no one else to hold oneself accountable.[19]

In an interview with Mei Chin from Bomb Magazine, Schutz said her inspiration for this collection came from the question, "What would this person look like if there was only one other person on earth to say what he looked like?" Schutz continues her explanation with her perception of achieved sanity, "There is this sense that you always need someone else to check reality with."[17]

Dana Schutz' painting of the corpse of Emmett Till, titled Open Casket, drew protests when shown in the 2017 Whitney Biennial,[20] and there were demands that it be removed from the show.[21]

Schutz's 2016 painting Open Casket derives from the photograph of the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till, whose mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open casket at his 1955 funeral because she wanted her community to see what had happened to her son. She had said, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."[22] Photos of Till's open casket funeral were published in The Chicago Defender and Jet magazine;[23] the murder was a seminal event in the civil rights movement.[24] The artist has stated that she approached the painting from the perspective of a mother and partly based it on the verbal account of Till's mother about seeing her son after his death.[25][26] Art.net critic Christian Viveros-Fauné described the work as "a powerful painterly reaction to the infamous [photograph] ... the canvas makes material the deep cuts and lacerations portrayed in the original photo by means of cardboard relief."[27]

Some objected to the painting's inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial,[28] there were debates online, and protesters physically blocked the work from view.[29] Artist and Whitney ISP graduate Hannah Black posted an open letter on Facebook, writing that "it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time. Although Schutz's intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist ... The painting must go."[30][31][21]

Schutz responded, "I don't know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till's only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. [...] It is easy for artists to self-censor. To convince yourself to not make something before you even try. There were many reasons why I could not, should not, make this painting ... (but) art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection."[32]

Jo Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye of the New Republic argued Open Casket is a form of cultural appropriation disrespectful toward Mobley's intention for the images of her son. Describing how the painting undermines the photograph they wrote, "Mobley wanted those photographs to bear witness to the racist brutality inflicted on her son; instead Schutz has disrespected that act of dignity, by defacing them with her own creative way of seeing."[33] Scholar Christina Sharpe, one of 34 other signatories to Black's letter, argued for the destruction of the painting so that neither the artist nor future owners of the painting could profit off it.[34] Schutz's work reportedly goes for up to $482,500 at auction,[32] but the controversy made Schutz take the work out of circulation after the Biennial. Schutz says that "The painting was never for sale, and I didn't feel like it was appropriate for it to circulate in the marketplace." In addition, her former dealer, Zach Feuer told her she should take the piece out of the Biennial.[35]

Artist, writer, and art professor at the University of Florida Coco Fusco[36] responded by writing: "I find it alarming and entirely wrongheaded to call for the censorship and destruction of an artwork, no matter what its content is or who made it."[37] She contextualized the painting within a history of anti-racist art made by white artists dating back to the 19th-century abolitionist movement. In weighing in on the discussion, Roberta Smith cited examples of "earlier works of art by those who crossed ethnic lines in their depiction of social trauma."[25] Smith also positioned Open Casket in relation to other paintings Schutz has made of bodies that have endured suffering and violence. This includes Presentation (2005), a work based on dead American soldiers being returned home from war in Iraq and Afghanistan and their invisibility in the media due to a military ban on photographing them.

In January 2019, Ted Loos of The New York Times wrote that "the tremors from [the controversy around Open Casket] are still being felt." When asked whether she regretted making the work, she said that she did not wish she hadn't painted it but said: "I definitely feel conflicted about it and very bad about it," and the effect of the controversy has been for her to internalize the protesters' viewpoints in making new work.[35]

Gary Garrels, senior curator at SFMoMA, said that "the debate was a 'wake-up call' for the art world. Reto Thüring who organized a solo exhibition of her work at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Boston ICA said that he "welcomed" the negative feedback the institutions received for showing Open Casket and that it was "a learning experience" for them.[35]

• Dana Schutz, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada, 2015
• Dana Schutz, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, 2014
• Götterdämerung, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, NY, 2012
• Dana Schutz, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, 2004
• Self Eaters and the People Who Love Them, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, 2004
• Run, Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, 2004
• Dana Schutz: Still Life, Shaheen Modern & Contemporary Art, Cleveland, 2003