Dana Schutz was born in 1976 in Livonia, Michigan, and received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio and her MFA from Columbia University, New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is known for formally inventive canvases that combine figuration and abstraction to construct complex visual narratives that engage the capacity of painting to represent subjective experience. Often depicting figures in seemingly impossible, enigmatic, or invented situations, her expressive canvases convey emotions and psychological states of mind that reveal the complications, tensions, and ambiguities of contemporary life.
Schutz came to prominence in the early 2000s for her dark humor, rife allusions to art history and provocative subject matter. Known for her “inventive and muscular way of shaping space on canvas to build what her friend, the painter Cecily Brown, called ‘bulletproof constructions’” (Ted Loos, “After the Quake, Dana Schutz Gets Back to Work”, The New York Times, 9 January 2019), Schutz’s bold, surreal figurations comment on pop culture, mythic figures and charged contemporary issues whilst drawing from a deep mine of art historical references encompassing Synthetic Cubism, German Expressionism, CoBrA, Masaccio, and Courbet, amongst others.
Schutz’s resulting concoctions are utterly engrossing even as they perplex or even repel, rendering the deep anxieties of contemporary life with searing high-speed bravura as well as shrewdly astute yet good-humored wit.
Dana Schutz creates masterful, expressionistic paintings in her Brooklyn-based studio and is considered by many to be one of the greatest figurative painters working in the United States today. In this 2022 interview, filmed in preparation for a major solo exhibition of her work, we learn more about her approach and get a fascinating view into her studio and her artistic process.
Practical Information
Dana Schutz
American (Born 1976)
Category: Ultra-Contemporary
Public Collections
Schutz’s work is held in numerous public collections, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Rubell Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Kansas; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Museum Exhibitions
Recent solo museum exhibitions of Schutz’s work include Dana Schutz: Eating Atom Bombs held at the Transformer Station, Cleveland, Ohio (2018), which debuted a series of paintings by the artist; an exhibition of new work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); a career survey at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2015); and a comprehensive solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, England (2013), that traveled to the kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (2014).
Musee d’Art Moderne de Paris
It is the first time that the work of this internationally renowned American artist has been shown in France on this scale.
Gallery Representation
DAVID ZWIRNER
Dana Schutz – Artworks & Biography | David Zwirner
PART I: SUMMARY
Auction Market Overview
2025 AUCTION STATISTICS
Turnover: USD 1,452,131
-37.7% vs. 2024
# Lots sold: 7
Sell-Through Rate: 88%
Highest Price Achieved at Auction:
HKD 50,050,000 / USD 6,456,648
(1 December 2020)
Auction Summary
2025 Auction Highlights
7 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a total turnover of USD 1,452,131. With 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 88%. The highest price of 2025 was achieved by Singer Songwriter, a painting dated 2013, that sold at Christie’s in Hong-Kong on 26 September 2025 for HKD 5,715,000 (USD 734,575).
2025 Top 3 Lots
4 lots sold for more than USD 100,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 1,304,176, representing 89.8% of the total turnover for 2025.
2024 Auction Highlights
12 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 2,330,816. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 75%. The highest price was achieved at Sotheby’s in New-York on 27 September 2024, when Eye Eater, a painting dated 2024, sold for USD 1,020,000.
2024 Top 3 Lots
6 lots sold for more than USD 100,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 2,043,766, representing 87.7% of the total turnover for 2024.
2023 Auction Highlights
6 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 2,154,063. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 67%. The highest price of 2023 was achieved at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong on 5 October 2023, when Glider, a painting dated 2015, sold for HKD 7,620,000 (USD 973,043).
2023 Top 3 Lots
2 lots sold for more than USD 500,000 in 2023, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 1,576,783, representing 73.2% of the total turnover for 2023.
2022 Auction Highlights
14 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 4,589,340. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 82%. The highest price of 2022 was achieved at Sotheby’s in New-York, on 19 May 2022 for Dead Zebra, a painting dated 2003 that sold for USD 945,000.
2022 Top 3 Lots
3 lots sold for more than USD 500,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 2,713,862, representing 59.1% of the total turnover for 2022.
2021 Auction Highlights
9 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 16,196,673. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 75%. The highest price of USD 2,970,000 has been achieved by The Fishermen, a painting dated 2021 at Christie’s in New-York on 11 May 2021.
2021 Top 3 Lots
2 lots sold for more than USD 2 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,361,199, representing 45.4% of the total turnover for 2021. 8 lots sold for more than USD 1 million.
Top Lots
#1. Elevator
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2020
Estimated: HKD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
HKD 50,050,000 / USD 6,456,648
Dana Schutz (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Elevator, 2017
Oil on canvas
136×170 inches (345.4 x 431.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2017’ (on the reverse)
#2. The Fishermen
Christie’s New-York: 10 May 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 2,970,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
ANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
The Fishermen, 2021
Oil on canvas
90×96 inches (228.6 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2021’ (on the reverse)
#3. Civil Planning
Sotheby’s New-York: 16 May 2019
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 2,420,000
(#49) DANA SCHUTZ | Civil Planning (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ
Civil Planning, 2004
Oil on canvas
114×168 inches (289.6 x 426.7 cm)
#4. My Mind Is Still, 2003-2004
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD18,250,000 / USD 2,342,326
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1975) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1975)
My Mind Is Still, 2003-2004
Oil on canvas
60 1/4 x 66 inches (153 x 167.5 cm)
Signed ‘Dana Schutz 2003-2004’ (on the reverse)
#5. Wrong Objects Saved for the Future, 2005
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 18 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 20,000,000
HKD 15,905,000 / USD 2,048,874
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Wrong Objects Saved for the Future, 2005
Oil on canvas
72 1/4 x 90 1/2 inches (183.4 by 229.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2005 on the reverse
PART II: AUCTION RESULTS
2026 Upcoming Lots
COMING SOON
2025 Auction Results
7 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a total turnover of USD 1,452,131. With 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 88%. The highest price of 2025 was achieved by Singer Songwriter, a painting dated 2013, that sold at Christie’s in Hong-Kong on 26 September 2025 for HKD 5,715,000 (USD 734,575).
2025 Top 3 Lots
4 lots sold for more than USD 100,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 1,304,176, representing 89.8% of the total turnover for 2025.
#1. Singer Songwriter, 2013
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 26 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 9,000,000
HKD 5,715,000 / USD 734,575
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Singer Songwriter | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Singer Songwriter, 2013
Oil on canvas
77×90 inches (195.5 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2013’ (on the reverse)
USD 500,000
#2. Frank at Night, 2002
Christie’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 239,400
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Frank at Night | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Frank at Night, 2002
Oil on canvas
32×36 inches (81.3 x 91.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2002’ (on the reverse)
#3. Robot Playing Violin, 2020
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 February 2025
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 177,800
Robot Playing Violin | Contemporary Discoveries | 2025 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Robot Playing Violin, 2020
Oil on canvas
47 1/4 x 37 inches (120×94 cm)
Signed and dated 2020 (on the reverse)
#4. Falling Cat, 2011
Phillips New-York: 28 February 2025
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 152,400
Falling Cat, 2011
Oil on canvas
USD 100,000
#5. Reconciliation, 2002
Christie’s New-York: 30 September 2025
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 76,200
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Reconciliation | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Reconciliation, 2002
Oil on canvas
47 3/8 x 42 1/8 inches (120.3 x 107 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2002’ (on the reverse)
#6. Roller Coaster, 2001
Rago: 29 January 2025
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 60,960
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
Roller Coaster, 2001
Oil on canvas
47×47 inches (119×119 cm)
Signed and dated to verso ‘Dana Schutz 2001’
#7. Liam (Blind date for Lila), 2001
Phillips online: 11 March 2025
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 10,795
Dana Schutz – Modern & Contemporary … Lot 9 February 2025 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Liam (Blind date for Lila), 2001
Oil on canvas
19 1/4 x 15 inches (48.9 x 38.1 cm)
Signed, partially titled, inscribed and dated “Portrait for Lila Dana Schutz 2001 “Liam”” on the reverse
Lots Passed
Gouged Girl, 2008
Ketterer Kunst Munich: 6 June 2025
Estimated: EUR 350,000
PASSED
Ketterer Kunst, Kunstauktionen, Buchauktionen München, Hamburg & Berlin
DANA SCHUTZ
Gouged Girl, 2008
Oil on canvas
71 3/8 x 78 inches (181×198 cm)
Signed and dated on the reverse
2024 Auction Results
12 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 2,330,816. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 75%. The highest price was achieved at Sotheby’s in New-York on 27 September 2024, when Eye Eater, a painting dated 2024, sold for USD 1,020,000.
2024 Top 3 Lots
6 lots sold for more than USD 100,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 2,043,766, representing 87.7% of the total turnover for 2024.
#1. Eye Eater, 2004
Sotheby’s New-York: 27 September 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,020,000
Eye Eater | Contemporary Curated | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Eye Eater, 2004
Oil on canvas
60×72 inches (152.4 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2004 (on the reverse)
USD 1 million
#2. Sigh, 2021
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 252,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Sigh | Christie’s (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Sigh, 2021
Bronze
35 x 24 3/4 x 34 1/2 inches (88.9 x 62.9 x 87.6 cm)
Incised with the artist’s signature and stamped with the date, number and foundry mark ‘Dana Schutz 2021 1/3’ (lower edge)
This work is number one from an edition of three plus one artist’s proof
#3. Arrangement, 2010
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 May 2024
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 4,000,000
HKD 1,890,000 / USD 241,966
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Arrangement | Christie’s (christies.com)
REPEAT SALE
Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2022
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 378,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Arrangement, 2010
Oil on canvas
72×90 inches (182.9 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2010’ (on the reverse)
#4. Boy with Boa, 2006
Sotheby’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 240,000
Boy with Boa | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Boy with Boa, 2006
Oil on canvas
72×78 inches (182.9 x 198.1 cm)
Signed and dated 2006 (on the reverse)
#5. Coma, 2004
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 100,000
USD 163,800
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Coma | Christie’s (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Coma, 2004
Oil on canvas
22×28 inches (55.9 x 71.1 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2004’ (on the reverse)
#6. Daytona, 2005
Christie’s New-York: 1 October 2024
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 126,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Daytona | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Daytona, 2005
Oil on canvas
36 1/8 x 32 inches (91.8 x 81.3 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2005’ (on the reverse)
USD 100,000
#7. Flasher 2, 2012
Sotheby’s New-York: 1 March 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 76,200
WORK ON PAPER
Flasher, 2 | Contemporary Curated | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Flasher, 2, 2012
Monotype with watercolor, pastel, crayon and pencil
48×72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2012 (lower right)
#8. The Trap, 2020
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 63,000
WORK ON PAPER
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), The Trap | Christie’s (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
The Trap, 2020
Gouache on paper
44 x 30 3/8 inches (111.8 x 77.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2020’ (on the reverse)
#9. Presenter, 2021
Christie’s New-York: 13 March 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 60,480
WORK ON PAPER
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Presenter | Christie’s (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Presenter, 2021
Gouache and graphite on paper
43 3/4 x 30 inches (111.1 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2021’ (on the reverse)
#10. Diver, 2021
Sotheby’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 48,000
WORK ON PAPER
Diver | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Diver, 2021
Gouache and graphite on paper
30 x 24 3/4 inches (76.2 x 63 cm)
Signed and dated 2021 (on the verso)
#11. Pennsylvania Terrarium, 2000
Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 40,000
USD 25,400
Pennsylvania Terrarium | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Pennsylvania Terrarium, 2000
Oil on canvas
11 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches (29.8 x 45 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2000 (on the reverse)
#12. Rob (Blind date for Elvis), 2001
Phillips New-York: 12 December 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 13,970
Dana Schutz – Modern & Contemporary … Lot 4 December 2024 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Rob (Blind date for Elvis), 2001
Oil on canvas
19 1/8 x 16 3/4 inches (48.6 x 42.5 cm)
Signed, partially titled, inscribed and dated “Portrait for Elvis Dana Schutz 2001 “Rob”” on the reverse
Lots Passed
Untitled, 2007
Christie’s New-York: 1 October 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
PASSED
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Untitled | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Untitled, 2007
Clay and wood
21 x 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches (53.3 x 29.2 x 29.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2007’ (on the underside)
Untitled, 2007
Christie’s London: 27 June 2024
Estimated: GBP 120,000 – 180,000
PASSED
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Untitled, 2007
Oil on canvas
66×73 inches (167.6 x 185.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2007’ (on the reverse)
2023 Auction Results
6 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 2,154,063. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 67%. The highest price of 2023 was achieved at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong on 5 October 2023, when Glider, a painting dated 2015, sold for HKD 7,620,000 (USD 973,043).
2023 Top 3 Lots
2 lots sold for more than USD 500,000 in 2023, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 1,576,783, representing 73.2% of the total turnover for 2023.
#1. Glider, 2015
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
HKD 7,620,000 / USD 973,348
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
Glider, 2015
Oil on canvas
84×62 inches (213.4 x 157.5 cm)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse
#2. Gravity Fanatic, 2005
Phillips London: 13 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
GBP 495,300 / USD 603,435
Dana Schutz – 20th Century & Contemp… Lot 34 October 2023 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Gravity Fanatic, 2005
Oil on canvas
73×79 inches (185.4 x 200.7 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2005’ on the reverse
#3. Gouged Girl, 2008
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 September 2023
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 500,000
USD 381,000
Gouged Girl | Contemporary Curated | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Gouged Girl, 2008
Oil on canvas
72×78 inches (182.9 x 198.1 cm)
#4. Flasher, 2012
Phillips New-York: 16 May 2023
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 114,300
WORK ON PAPER
Dana Schutz 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
Monotype with watercolor, pastel, crayon and pencil on paper
48×72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated “Dana Schutz 2012” lower right
#5. Twilight of the Gods, 2011
Christie’s London: 29 June 2023
Estimated: GBP 40,000 – 50,000
GBP 52,920 / USD 66,860
WORK ON PAPER
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Twilight of the Gods | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Twilight of the Gods, 2011
Monotype with watercolor, colored pencil, crayon and pastel on paper
45 5/8 x 60 inches (116 x 152.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2011’ (lower right)
#6. Untitled, 2011
Christie’s online: 18 July 2023
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 15,120
WORK ON PAPER
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Untitled | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Untitled, 2011
Ink and watercolor on paper
13×17 inches (33 x 43.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2011’ (on the reverse)
Lots Passed
Singer Songwriter, 2013
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 November 2023
Estimated: HKD 16,000,000 – 26,000,000
PASSED
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Singer Songwriter | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Singer Songwriter, 2013
Oil on canvas
77×90 inches (195.5 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2013’ (on the reverse)
Spiderman, 2002
Sotheby’s New-York: 9 March 2023
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
PASSED
Spiderman | Contemporary Curated | 2023 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Spiderman, 2002
Oil on canvas
66×71 inches (167.6 x 180.3 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz and dated 2002 (on the reverse)
2022 Auction Results
14 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 4,589,340. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 82%. The highest price of 2022 was achieved at Sotheby’s in New-York, on 19 May 2022 for Dead Zebra, a painting dated 2003 that sold for USD 945,000.
2022 Top 3 Lots
3 lots sold for more than USD 500,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 2,713,862, representing 59.1% of the total turnover for 2022.
#1. Dead Zebra, 2003
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 945,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Dead Zebra, 2003
Oil on canvas
60×66 inches (152.4 x 167.6 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz, titled Dead Zebra and dated Spring 2003 (on the reverse)
#2. Forever 21, 2019
Christie’s London: 12 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 600,000 – 800,000
GBP 781,200 / USD 886,116
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Forever 21, 2019
Oil on canvas
91×84 inches (231×213 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2019’ (on the reverse)
#3. Speech, 2009
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 7 October 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 5,500,000
HKD 6,930,000 / USD 882,746
Dana Schutz 戴娜・舒茨 | Speech 演講 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Speech, 2009
Oil and acrylic on canvas
90⅛ x 80 inches (228.9 x 203.2 cm)
Signed and dated 2009 on the reverse
#4. Arrangement, 2010
Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2022
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 378,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Arrangement, 2010
Oil on canvas
72×90 inches (182.9 x 228.6 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2010’ (on the reverse)
#5. Myopic, 2004
Christie’s New-York: 13 May 2022
Estimated: USD 70,000 – 90,000
USD 327,600
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Myopic | Christie’s (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Myopic, 2004
Oil on canvas
23 1/8 x 18 inches (58.7 x 45.7 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2004’ (on the reverse)
#6. Sneeze 2, 2002
Phillips New-York: 18 May 2022
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 277,200
Dana Schutz – 20th Century & Contemporar… Lot 37 May 2022 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Sneeze 2, 2002
Oil on canvas
19 3/4 x 18 5/8 inches (50.2 x 47.3 cm)
Signed and dated “Dana Schutz 2002” on the reverse
#7. Death of the Self Eater, 2004
Christie’s New-York: 10 March 2022
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 201,600
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Death of the Self Eater, 2004
Oil on canvas
17 1/4 x 19 3/4 inches (43.8 x 50.2 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2004’ (on the reverse)
#8. Man Eating Chicken, 2008
Sotheby’s New-York: 17 November 2022
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 138,600
Man Eating Chicken | Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Man Eating Chicken, 2008
Oil on canvas
66 1/8 x 75 inches (170.2 x 195.6 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz and dated 2008 (on the reverse)
#9. Tom, 2007
Sotheby’s New-York: 30 September 2022
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 113,400
Tom | Contemporary Curated | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Tom, 2007
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 1/2 inches (101.6 x 77.5 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz and dated 2007 (on the verso)
#10. Red Flowers, 2003
Phillips New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 107,100
Dana Schutz – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 332 November 2022 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Red Flowers, 2003
Oil on canvas
16×20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm)
Signed, dedicated and dated “To Jessica and Jon Congratulations on your wedding! Love, Dana Dana Schutz 2003” on the reverse
#11. Bound 2, 2019
Sotheby’s New-York: 20 May 2022
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 100,800
WORK ON PAPER
Bound 2 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Bound 2, 2019
Monotype with watercolor and watercolor crayon on paper
35 3/4 x 30 inches (90.8 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and dated 2019 (lower right)
#12. Foxes, 2001
Christie’s London: 14 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 88,200 / USD 98,878
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Foxes | Christie’s (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Foxes, 2001
Oil on canvas
34 5/8 x 36 3/8 inches (87.8 x 92.5 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2001’ (on the reverse)
#13. Beat Out the Sun, 2022
Christie’s New-York: 29 September 2022
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 75,600
WORK ON PAPER
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Beat Out the Sun | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Beat Out the Sun, 2022
Gouache on paper
30×25 inches (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
#14. Carving an Ice Tiger, 2013
Sotheby’s New-York: 17 November 2022
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 56,700
WORK ON PAPER
Carving an Ice Tiger | Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Carving an Ice Tiger, 2013
Charcoal on paper
36×24 inches (91.4 x 61 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz and dated 2013 (on the verso)
Lots Passed
Loudmouth, 2011
Sotheby’s New-York: 17 November 2022
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
PASSED
Loudmouth | Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Loudmouth, 2011
Oil on canvas
84 x 96 1/8 inches (213.5 x 244.1 cm)
Signed and dated 2011 on the reverse
2021 Auction Results
9 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 16,196,673. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 75%. The highest price of USD 2,970,000 has been achieved by The Fishermen, a painting dated 2021 at Christie’s in New-York on 11 May 2021. 2 lots sold for more than USD 2 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,361,199, representing 45.4% of the total turnover for 2021. 8 lots sold for more than USD 1 million.
2021 Top 3 Lots
#1. The Fishermen, 2021
Christie’s New-York: 10 May 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 2,970,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
ANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
The Fishermen, 2021
Oil on canvas
90×96 inches (228.6 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2021’ (on the reverse)
#2. My Mind Is Still, 2003-2004
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD18,250,000 / USD 2,342,326
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1975) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1975)
My Mind Is Still, 2003-2004
Oil on canvas
60 1/4 x 66 inches (153 x 167.5 cm)
Signed ‘Dana Schutz 2003-2004’ (on the reverse)
#3. Wrong Objects Saved for the Future, 2005
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 18 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 20,000,000
HKD 15,905,000 / USD 2,048,874
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Wrong Objects Saved for the Future, 2005
Oil on canvas
72 1/4 x 90 1/2 inches (183.4 x 229.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2005 on the reverse
#4. Bain de Soleil, 2016
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
HKD 15,250,000 / USD 1,963,915
Bain de Soleil, 2016
Oil on canvas
74×84 inches (188 x 213.5 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2016’ (on the reverse)
#5. Smokers, 2021
Christie’s New-York: 9 November 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,830,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Smokers, 2021
Oil on canvas
72×48 inches (182.9 x 121.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2021’ (on the reverse)
#6. God 2, 2013
Sotheby’s New-York: 12 May 2021
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,714,000
God 2 | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
God 2, 2013
Oil on canvas
106×72 inches (269.2 x 182.9 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2013 on the reverse
#7. Swiss Family Traveling, 2015
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,482,000
DANA SCHUTZ
Swiss Family Traveling, 2015
oil on canvas
84×88 inches (213.4 x 223.5 cm)
Signed and dated “Dana Schutz 2015” on the reverse
#8. Lion Eating Its Tamer, 2015
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 14,000,000
HKD 9,307,000 / USD 1,455,924
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
Lion Eating Its Tamer, 2015
Oil on canvas
84×88 inches (213.2 x 223.8 cm)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse
#9. First Telepathic Email, 2006
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 20 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,500,000 – 2,500,000
HKD 3,024,000 / USD 389,640
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
First Telepathic Email, 2006
Oil on canvas
30 1/2 x 40 1/4 inches (77.5 x 102.2 cm)
Signed and dated 2006 on the reverse
PART III: FOCUS
Record Breakers
The Fishermen, 2021
Christie’s New-York: 10 May 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 2,970,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
ANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
The Fishermen, 2021
Oil on canvas
90×96 inches (228.6 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2021’ (on the reverse)
Dana Schutz is known for her bold and dramatic canvases that combine abstract elements with striking gestural figuration. Often combining recognizable subject matter with a healthy dose of the grotesque, the comical, or the absurd, she paints powerful canvases that reward extended viewing. The Fishermen is a striking example of the artist’s new work and continues her exploration of traditional motifs filtered through a surreal painterly style. Speaking about the present work, Schutz explains, “A boat can be like a contained world within the painting. In The Fishermen, the boat is confined, almost like a fruit bowl and the characters within seem to be similar to the creatures they are catching. They are rudderless, as an oar-like sunbeam seems to be pushing them downriver” (D. Schutz, in conversation with Christie’s, April 2021).
Drawing upon Surrealism and the history of painting in equal measure, The Fishermen is drenched in a strong vibrant palette reminiscent of Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. Filled with a myriad of symbols and painterly marks, the work also evokes the late figurative paintings of Philip Guston. Against a rich crimson sky and a dark arterial sea, a cast of characters ride in a rudimentary boat. In the rear, a man with sparse blonde hair and a red shirt wraps his arms around a cache of fish and bones. Another figure, its distorted, magenta face resting in the crook of the previous man’s arm, stares upward. In the background, a head made of red, blue, green, and brown strokes features a prominent eye and a gash of a mouth. All three of these individuals, including the fish, gaze at a yellow, sun-like shape in the upper reaches of the canvas with a mixture of awe and apprehension. In the bow of the boat, a sleeping person with green eye shadow lolls a striped blue and black arm into the surf ahead of the ship.
Elevator, 2017
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2020
Estimated: HKD 15,000,000 – 20,000,000
HKD 50,050,000 / USD 6,456,648
Dana Schutz (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Elevator, 2017
Oil on canvas
136×170 inches (345.4 x 431.8 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2017’ (on the reverse)
A profusion of vibrant colour and fractured form, Elevator (2017) exemplifies Dana Schutz’s glorious brand of painterly breakdown. Flailing limbs, flushed faces and contorted bodies rush to fill an elevator compartment. Its metallic doors are closing in, framing the picture with claustrophobic urgency. Ants, mayflies and a gargantuan stag beetle and cicada join the melee, their carapaces glinting among the tangle of fluorescent clothing. One man bends to pick up scraps of paper from the floor; a hand grips an ankle near the ceiling; a fallen gramophone threatens to block the door. Schutz’s brushwork fragments objects and bodies into bold, geometric planes, structuring all this chaos with crystalline painterly logic.
Like many of her pictures, Elevator depicts a subject likely never before tackled in paint, conjuring an escapist, humorous vision of reality rebuilt before our eyes. A related work, Fight in an Elevator (2015), is a promised gift to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Schutz pulls her ideas from pop culture, art history, current events and the realms of private daydream. With its riot of people, insects and objects bent, resized and crammed into the canvas, the present work’s crowded elevator is just such a setting. Schutz’s paint has a sensual, metamorphic magic, and what might have been an everyday scene takes on a fantastical grandeur. Resourceful and omnivorous, Schutz’s other human subjects have included people sneezing, giving birth, or eating their own faces.
Civil Planning, 2004
Sotheby’s New-York: 16 May 2019
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 2,420,000
(#49) DANA SCHUTZ | Civil Planning (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ
Civil Planning, 2004
Oil on canvas
114×168 inches (289.6 x 426.7 cm)
Breathtaking in scale and ambitious in execution, Dana Schutz’s Civil Planning is a painterly tour-de-force, wrapping the viewer in a bizarre and enthralling realm in which broad strokes of sumptuous paint and saturated, Fauvist hues playfully mask the darker absurdities that play out in this dystopian panorama. Executed in 2006, Civil Planning is undeniably a masterwork by the New York based artist Dana Schutz. Within the densely layered compositional narrative, two young women sit under a grouping of trees, peacefully building what appears to be a rock tower and blissfully unaware of the inexplicably bizarre and grotesque oddities that surround and enclose them. Indeed, a closer look reveals that far from the bucolic haven that one might imagine, the forest is littered with dismembered body parts and other debris and populated by orange and purple monsters that hover nearby, partially concealed by the dense foliage.
Wrong Objects Saved for the Future, 2005
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 18 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 20,000,000
HKD 15,905,000 / USD 2,048,874
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Wrong Objects Saved for the Future, 2005
Oil on canvas
72 1/4 x 90 1/2 inches (183.4 by 229.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2005 on the reverse
Wrong Objects Saved for the Future depicts, as its title suggests, a time capsule of objects buried for a potentially nonexistent future audience – or an audience that could only misinterpret them. These objects refer to technologies, histories and narratives that have become obsolete. The eclectic constellation includes a conch shell (referring to the disconnected sense of hearing the ocean where there is no ocean present), CDs with no player, an old radio, a film projector, frozen embryos and organs, cultural artifacts, an abstract painting that recalls the works of Wassily Kandinsky, a car bumper near a dinosaur jaw, the frozen head of Timothy Leary, and a dead hare that refers to Joseph Beuys’s performance “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” (1965).
Self Eaters
Eye Eater, 2004
Sotheby’s New-York: 27 September 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,020,000
Eye Eater | Contemporary Curated | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Eye Eater, 2004
Oil on canvas
60×72 inches (152.4 x 182.9 cm)
Signed and dated 2004 (on the reverse)
Often portraying allegorical matter in mysterious and thrilling scenery, Dana Schutz’s canvases capture complex chronicles of contemporary life, and engage the viewer’s psychological senses through their capacity to viscerally portray subjective experience. Illustrating fairy tale tropes with expressionistic bravado, Eye Eater is a captivating example from the artist’s revered series of Self Eaters which both allure and disturb in their surreal, whimsical depictions. A macabre, fantastical scene executed with a paradoxical cacophony of resplendent color, the work portrays an entrancing narrative dystopia: beams of light trickle through a forest canopy, illuminating a blotchy figure crouched low to the ground with an eyeball in hand in an apparent act of self-affliction. Rendered in short, rapid brushstrokes and an incongruous palette featuring fleshy pink, bright green, and yellow, the painting articulates the unease that epitomizes the artist’s acclaimed comic-grotesque vision.
Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950–52. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Art © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Complicating Schutz’s allusions to a futuristic humanoid race, her figures’ recurrent wild existence—often portrayed in verdant jungles—points towards something more primal, as if to remark the ongoing absurdity of our species. Though profoundly imaginative, her metanarratives are rooted in present realities, on societies whose norms when closely examined devolve into the repugnant. The figure in Eye Eater is contorted and unevenly patterned as if to reflect this decay and destruction—at once recalling Francisco de Goya, Edgar Allen Poe, and Willem De Kooning’s violent Women. De Kooning himself famously said, “Beauty becomes petulant to me. I like the grotesque. It’s more joyous.” Schutz is without question the 21st century inheritor of this idea, creating a sense of hope amidst her unblinking gaze into the unpleasant truths that abound in everyday life. Her self-cannibalizing characters, therefore, help the artist explore meaning-making in a world of self-consumption for the sake of regeneration.
“… The Self-Eaters began privately as drawings that I was afraid would seem super angsty, like bad therapy or really embarrassing expressionism, but I became interested in the way they could open up into a situation. If you took death out of the equation, they could eat themselves and then remake themselves to be any form they wanted to be. In this case the subject was a site—something that constantly produced and consumed itself. I felt like it could relate to painting, since there was so much recycling going on, but also other systems in the world.”
The focus on eye infliction in Eye Eater evokes a long history of its archetypal use, conjuring the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella whereby her eyes are pecked out by birds, or Oedipus’ act of self-blinding after learning that he had married his mother and killed his own father. In the present work, besides the eye in the sitter’s hand, two perfectly spherical additional eyes rock gently on the ground nearby. Having come to rest neatly on a circular patch of sunshine, perfectly spaced from each other, these two yet-to-be-eaten eyes immediately call to mind Carlo Crivelli’s altarpiece of Saint Lucy, who preferred to gouge out her own eyes than be taken by a suitor. Rather than ending her narratives with the classic resolution of pure tragedy, however, Schutz’s Self Eaters carry optimism through the possibility for rebirth and renewal. Therefore, eyes are eaten perhaps for what they have seen, making the present scene become one of recycling and transformation so as to lead to a new vision of reality.
Gouged Girl, 2008
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 September 2023
Estimated: USD 350,000 – 500,000
USD 381,000
Gouged Girl | Contemporary Curated | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Gouged Girl, 2008
Oil on canvas
72×78 inches (182.9 x 198.1 cm)
Blurring still life and portraiture genres, Gouged Girl from 2008 is a captivating example from Dana Schutz’s revered series of Self Eaters which both allure and disturb in their surreal, whimsical depictions. Often depicting mythical matter in mysterious and thrilling scenery, Schutz’s canvases capture complex chronicles of contemporary life, and engage the viewer’s psychological senses through their capacity to portray subjective experience. Presenting an idyllic, coastal picnic scene at first glance, Gouged Girl is a narrative dystopia, wherein the subject, seemingly made of watermelon, has clawed at their fruit flesh. The moment is one of pleasure and catastrophe, the subject victim to the banal violence often apparent in Schutz’s imaginings. Speaking to the series, Schutz notes, “… The Self-Eaters began privately as drawings that I was afraid would seem super angsty, like bad therapy or really embarrassing expressionism, but I became interested in the way they could open up into a situation. If you took death out of the equation, they could eat themselves and then remake themselves to be any form they wanted to be. In this case the subject was a site – something that constantly produced and consumed itself. I felt like it could relate to painting, since there was so much recycling going on, but also other systems in the world” (Dana Schutz cited in Helaine Posner, “If the Face Had Wheels: An Interview with Dana Schutz,” in: Exh. Cat., New York, Neuberger Museum of Art (and traveling), Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels, September – December 2011, p. 87).
Man Eating Chicken, 2008
Sotheby’s New-York: 17 November 2022
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 138,600
Man Eating Chicken | Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Man Eating Chicken, 2008
Oil on canvas
66 1/8 x 75 inches (170.2 x 195.6 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz and dated 2008 (on the reverse)
With Man Eating Chicken from 2008, Dana Schutz exercises her fascinatingly complex canvases that convey an array of emotions and psychological states within contemporary life. The present scene is a tribute to the ingenious blending of figurative abstraction, as Schutz fractures the illuminated figure of a seated man into strikingly bold, thick strokes of rich pigment. The exquisitely detailed sweeps of wood grain ground the work, epitomizing Schutz’s extraordinary gift with paint and composition. While the pale gray flecks accompanying the site of incineration suggest a fictional apocalyptic setting, Man Eating Chicken retains a certain thrilling radiance. The scene is made electric through its limited color palette: the blindingly bright yellow of a luminous sun and the rich, glowing golds of the table, contrasted with the purple folds of the man’s shirt suffuse the work with lucid chromatic harmony. Indeed, in the present work, the balance between structural solidity and phosphorescence, desolation and fantasy, figurative and abstract, culminates in a mesmerizing field of undisputed brilliance.
RENÉ MAGRITTE, L’ELLIPSE (THE ELLIPSIS), 1948, ROYAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS OF BELGIUM, BRUSSELS
Schutz’s subject matter often derives from imaginative, psychologically complex scenes with elusive narratives which she then brings to life with a painterly, expressive hand. Her provocative scenes comment on pop culture, mythic figures, and charged contemporary issues all whilst drawing from a wealth of art historical references, including Synthetic Cubism, German Expressionism, and Surrealism, amongst others. Man Eating Chicken is part of a series of works in which Schutz depicted mundane, bourgeois leisure scenes met with sudden annihilation, resulting in cartoonish forms of destruction. Injected with sardonic wit, Schutz’s concoctions are utterly captivating as they take on anxieties of contemporary life with theatric and luminous panache. Consistent with many of Schutz’s greatest works, Man Eating Chicken teeters between the sublime and the dystopian. The ravaged pictorial space is sublimely radiant as it challenges our imaginative capacity and cements Schutz as one of the most mesmerizing and ingenious visionaries of her generation.
Other Paintings
Frank at Night, 2002
Christie’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 239,400
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976), Frank at Night | Christie’s
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Frank at Night, 2002
Oil on canvas
32×36 inches (81.3 x 91.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2002’ (on the reverse)
In Frank at Night, we find our everyman/no-man Frank looking out into a glittering expanse of stars. The snaking dark waters reach deep into the beyond and suggest the curvature of this private and barren (save one) earth. He is awake and active, perhaps the opposite of his dolorous daytime self and his eyes seem to blaze with equal intensity as the night sky. His posture and placement in the frame invite the viewer into the space while also strengthening the impression of solitude at the end of the earth. The “Frank from Observation” series, conceived by Schutz as a separate exploration from her linear oeuvre, is a lovingly introspective retrospective of the artist’s idea of herself as creator. The subject is in no way autobiographical, but like Schutz’s work in general, it allows the artist to play god. As she states “I have never felt guilty about taking him apart, because he would just become something else.”
Looking at the expression on Frank’s face, it seems that he is clearly enjoying this quiet and beautiful moment, but the eyes betray the inner realization that this is all a stage upon which the artist experiments. This is indeed one of the artist’s most conventionally beautiful pieces; the inky night sky blocked out in seemingly simple strokes, a sense of cold and height eking out of the canvas. You can tell the journey Frank took to get here, far from the rock and desert infinity of the other works from the series. It seems to be a punctuated pause from the dolorous poses that we’ve seen Frank take before. The Frank series moves and changes but there are never any temporal markers of progression within Frank, only within the empty world around him. Day flows into night and the stars rise and fall, but Frank does not change independently of the artist’s will.
This loaded existence being nothing to the subject but everything to the viewer and the artist is what make Schutz’s work so compelling. As a closed system, Frank is endearingly simple, but instilled with this unrealized potential that we see Schutz continue to develop throughout her career. The Self-Eaters are trapped in their own solipsism and even Frank becomes regurgitated in her later work The Breeders.
Falling Cat, 2011
Phillips New-York: 28 February 2025
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 152,400
Falling Cat, 2011
oil on canvas
Schutz is known for her lively, exaggerated figures and use of color to create emotional impact. While much of her work focuses on human forms, she often paints animals in unusual situations. In Falling Cat, the stretched and twisted body adds a surreal quality, recalling the distorted figures of Francis Bacon and the expressive brushwork of artists like Chaim Soutine. This painting explores the themes of unpredictability and resilience. The cat’s expressive face, rendered with exaggerated features, underscores Schutz’s ability to evoke psychological depth even within whimsical subjects. Falling Cat reflects the artist’s ongoing engagement with fantastical compositions while beginning to incorporate more politically charged subjects. This was the year that solidified Schutz’s place as one of the most important contemporary painters of her generation. Falling Cat exemplifies Schutz’s masterful ability to capture both the physical and psychological complexities of her subjects.
Robot Playing Violin, 2020
Sotheby’s New-York: 28 February 2025
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 177,800
Robot Playing Violin | Contemporary Discoveries | 2025 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Robot Playing Violin, 2020
Oil on canvas
47 1/4 x 37 inches (120×94 cm)
Signed and dated 2020 (on the reverse)
Frequently depicting imagery pulled from modern culture, Dana Schutz’s often allegorical paintings are mystifying explorations of near-human experiences, drawing the viewer in through wonder and intrigue. Her thrilling work captures complicated aspects and histories of contemporary life, engaging the viewer’s senses through their ability to embody subjective experiences. Robot Playing Violin, executed in 2020, is painted with a vibrant color palette, posing bold reds and yellows against pastel purples rendered wet-in-wet with oil on canvas in rapid brushstrokes, articulating the bizarre and sublime quality of the subject. The white strokes of clouds swirling through the sky soften the composition, while building a greater sense of macabre.
Schutz’s commitment to developing a narrative around her work, constructing imagined worlds that explore meta-narratives around humanity, the end of the world, the future, and technology, grants her work a more critical reading. What might her work elucidate about our world? Schutz’s daring, surrealist compositions pull from pop culture, mythology and contemporary issues whilst drawing from a deep mine of art historical references encompassing Cubism and German Expressionism. Employing wit and humor, Schutz’s fictional characters seem to grapple with the anxiety and perplexity of our time. The disfigurement of the robot in Robot Playing Violin might be understood to symbolize the rampant degeneracy of our society.
Gerrit van Honthorst, A merry group behind a balustrade with a violin and a lute player.
Sold: Sotheby’s New York, 30 January 2014 for $7,557,000.
Schutz’s oil paintings are executed with a sumptuous painterly style, relying on a thick impasto with whimsical and daring strokes. Devoting herself to visually crafting a deeply psychological feeling in the fictional world of her paintings, Schutz’s work navigates canonical techniques and styles, which have defined art history, with her own futuristic aesthetic. Schutz’s humanoid figure in Robot Playing Violin reflects such an interest as the subject is in part traditional, recalling Old Master works of figures playing the famed instrument, but daringly contemporary, playing with themes of humanity’s future and what is to come. Blending the classic with the avant-garde, there is an inherent humanity in the work, too. Music and the emotion it both draws from and inspires is a defining feature of human experience, something which grounds moments in everyday life. The robot playing the violin, thus teeters the line between what is human and what is to come of humans. Wrestling the anxiety of a joint future might be the subject of the work, as it is an often explored theme of the artist’s oeuvre.
Pablo Picasso, Violin and Grapes, 1912. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The structural compositional organization of Schutz’s paintings grant them a certain boundary, with a limited point of entry. There is a rigidity to the picture plane. But, this is met with the openness of the narrative, the dreamed up world, in which the figurative works in Schutz’s oeuvre exist. The looseness of the impasto, too, beseeches a sense of exploration and imagination that allows the viewer to explore the world of the picture. Pulling from Picasso and Picabia, Schutz’s cubistic style feels modern while still staying relevant to themes of contemporary art. Something between expressive Colorfield and the figuration of Cubism and Surrealism, Schutz finds her place in the canon.
Boy with Boa, 2006
Sotheby’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 240,000
Boy with Boa | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s
DANA SCHUTZ (b. 1976)
Boy with Boa, 2006
Oil on canvas
72×78 inches (182.9 x 198.1 cm)
Signed and dated 2006 (on the reverse)
“I often invent imaginative systems and situations to generate information. These situations usually delineate a site where making is a necessity, audiences potentially don’t exist, objects transcend their function and reality is malleable.”
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Snake Charmer, c. 1879. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Gravity Fanatic, 2005
Phillips London: 13 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
GBP 495,300 / USD 603,435
Dana Schutz – 20th Century & Contemp… Lot 34 October 2023 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Gravity Fanatic, 2005
Oil on canvas
73×79 inches (185.4 x 200.7 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2005’ on the reverse
Dana Schutz’s large-scale compositions feature subjects embroiled in absurd scenarios. In Gravity Fanatic, a woman has used tape and small weights to secure both herself and a variety of miscellaneous objects surrounding her to the ground. In the artist’s typical style, anatomy is elongated and distorted; legs seem impossibly crossed, fingers are bent at alarming angles and the skin of her face is being grotesquely stretched ‘like chewing gum’.i Schutz creates charged, exciting works – energetic brushstrokes and a thick application of paint give them a visceral impact that heighten the bodily, raw subject matter.
Schutz frequently plays with perspective and proportion in her work.
“I want my subjects and paintings to feel like they have space in front of the picture plane, that’s a specific interaction with the viewer.”
A visceral exchange between subject and viewer is something Schutz achieves with ease: In her Face Eater series, we are rendered helpless as we watch crazed, abstracted faces attempt to devour themselves – cropped closely to amplify the horror. The warped depiction of anatomy in Gravity Fanatic’s which occupies most of the canvas, exaggerated with angular streaks of white tape and tiny objects, make us feel as if we are both looking down and up at the looming figure. Whilst Schutz’s compositions are often bizarre and busy, she demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of pictorial logic to provide structure within her work – the crossed arms and legs and angular lines of her body acts a central point of focus amid a complex narrative. A sardonic humor runs throughout Schutz’s corpus. In Gravity Fanatic, we are confronted with a subject, obsessed with the idea and effect of gravity, so much so that she secures herself and possessions to the floor. The arrangement of Schutz’s figures as a driving force of her narratives are both ‘entertaining and political’; an egalitarian means of parodying anyone and everyone. In many of her other works, Schutz calls upon an amalgamation of political, cultural and art historical references to inform her narratives.
Glider, 2015
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
HKD 7,620,000 / USD 973,348
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
Glider, 2015
Oil on canvas
84×62 inches (213.4 x 157.5 cm)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse
A testament to the visual potency of Dana Schutz’s distinctive artistic vernacular, Glider is a painterly tour-de-force, enveloping the viewer in a mesmerizing cascade of dystopian figuration. Executed in 2015, the present work epitomizes Schutz’s celebrated visual style, through which the artist powerfully fuses abstraction and figuration by means of expressive imagination, fragmented bodies, and thrillingly impossible scenarios. Within the ravaged pictorial space of the present work, a flurry of fractured shapes and planes resolve to reveal a mythic central figure: teeth bared, arms akimbo, this creature is at once fantastical and ferocious, dwelling in the realm between deity and monstrosity. Exhibited at the artist’s acclaimed Dana Schutz: Fight in an Elevator exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York, in 2015, Glider is equal parts macabre, comical, and psychologically complex, embodying the artist’s visceral and mysterious vision.
PABLO PICASSO, PORTRAIT OF DORA MAAR, 1937
COLLECTION OF MUSEE PICASSO, PARIS ©PHOTO SCALA, FLORENCE/ 2023 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
As bewitching as any Cubist portrait by Pablo Picasso, the central figure’s face of Glider appears nestled between a wooden chair; this red figure with elongated breasts is surrounded by various glasses of water and straws, capturing a private moment of solitude. The fractured face of the Picasso-esque figure expresses a sense of shock and ecstasy within the chromatic background of neon colours and crisply delineated shapes, the head leaning back and inviting the viewer into this intimate moment. An artist whose work has been described as “teetering on the edge of tradition and innovation,” Schutz’s paintings mine both art history and her own potent visual imagination to collapse time, space and reason within her two-dimensional picture plane. Powerfully exemplified in Glider, her oeuvre draws on the legacies of such touchstone figures as Wassily Kandinsky and Max Beckmann, while always allowing Schutz’s own unique talent to explore the expansive possibilities of the painterly medium today.
“My paintings are loosely based on metanarratives. The pictures float in and out of pictorial genres. Still lifes become personified, portraits become events and landscapes become constructions. I embrace the area between which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive.”
Painted in 2015, a period when Schutz often conceived of figures trapped in enclosed spaces or environs such as elevators, Glider is a vast, exhilarating work which confronts the viewer head-on, its cascading fractured shapes and crisp planes slicing through the familiarity of figuration and objectivity. The ravaged pictorial space is nevertheless radiant, luminous in a chromatic unity anchored by Schutz’s signature use of saturated color.
Forever 21, 2019
Christie’s London: 12 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 600,000 – 800,000
GBP 781,200 / USD 886,116
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Forever 21, 2019
Oil on canvas
91×84 inches (231×213 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2019’ (on the reverse)
Stretching over two metres in height, Dana Schutz’s Forever 21 (2019) is a striking, boldly lit meditation on contemporary online life. At its centre sits a nude young woman on a bed, her arms crossed in a close echo of Edvard Munch’s famed Symbolist painting Puberty (1894-1895). She stares upwards, eyes wide, at a turquoise panel which illuminates the surrounding darkness with an eerie glow. A hand-mirror on the bed reflects her gaze from the panel above. Beside her sits an older woman, who is engaged in dispute with a mean-looking goblin of bright yellow hue. The artist has explained that all three figures are avatars of the same person, and that the painting depicts a woman who is jealous of her own online presence: the turquoise glow is a phone screen. The fast-fashion retailer Forever 21 was given its name because its founder believed 21 was the most enviable age. Schutz uses the slogan to sharpen a modern-day vanitas that portrays the perils of gazing too long at your own image. With its saturated palette and dramatic, tightly interlocking composition, the work exemplifies Schutz’s ability to conjure masterful paintings from the most unexpected ideas.
Schutz pulls her material from pop culture, art history, current events and the realms of private daydream. Objects and reality become malleable and metamorphic in her works, their forceful compositions bursting with dense, fantastical and ambiguous narrative incident. Her vigorous handling of color and form echoes the work of German Expressionists such as Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, whose figures were often darkly comedic and brutally, even cartoonishly exaggerated. In Forever 21, she also draws upon the ‘Death and the Maiden’ motif common to paintings of the Northern Renaissance: closely related to the Danse macabre tradition, these allegorical works depict young women menaced by older and deceased versions of themselves, warning of life’s fragility and the inevitability of aging. With both playful humor and formal audacity, Schutz reimagines the theme for the digital age.
Speech, 2009
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 7 October 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 5,500,000
HKD 6,930,000 / USD 882,746
Dana Schutz 戴娜・舒茨 | Speech 演講 | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Speech, 2009
Oil and acrylic on canvas
90⅛ x 80 inches (228.9 x 203.2 cm)
Signed and dated 2009 on the reverse
Dana Schutz’s large-scale canvas, Speech, 2009, encapsulates the American artist’s masterful painterly technique and genre-defying relationship to her forbears in art history. At first glance, the palette is bright and inviting; warm shades of violet and orange draw the eye to what appears to be an outdoor gathering. Under a warm evening sun, five hoofprints have left their imprint in the mottled dirt. On closer inspection, this rural idyll is not what it seems. The figures are awkward and fragmented; their cocktail party dresses out of place in this muddy terrain. In their semi-abstraction, and in the grey geometric hatching that scars their profiles, one is reminded of Picasso’s portraits of the late 1930s and 1940s. The eye is then drawn to the dominant figure of the composition, the speaker in this Speech. An abstracted arm is held aloft, apparently commanding attention from the group. Yet the speaker’s face is expressionless, depicted in swirls of paint that bleed into the surrounds. In this figure, we are reminded again of Picasso, adorned as he is in a Breton striped shirt (and what looks like a beret); an outfit that has become synonymous with the image of great the Spanish painter in popular culture.
Dead Zebra, 2003
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 945,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Dead Zebra, 2003
Oil on canvas
60×66 inches (152.4 x 167.6 cm)
Signed Dana Schutz, titled Dead Zebra and dated Spring 2003 (on the reverse)
Tender yet electric, bright yet somber, Dana Schutz’s Dead Zebra is a spectacular homage to the artist’s celebrated style of figurative abstraction, one that creates elaborate visual narratives by means of expressive painterly imagination. Often depicting mythical matter in mysterious and thrilling scenery, Schutz’s canvases capture complex chronicles of contemporary life, and engage the viewer’s psychological senses through their capacity to portray subjective experience.
In true Schutz-ian style, Dead Zebra uses color as a light source to capture space within the painting. Here a surreal dreamscape is brought to life by an eclectic palette which radiates into three-dimensional space, creating a fragmented composition of shapes and textures. Throughout the canvas, color illuminates the scene. The serenity and calmness of the zebra is juxtaposed with the cacophony of colors in the surrounding landscape, bringing the somnambulant body to the forefront of an otherwise electric scene. An orb of yellow sunlight lends the zebra a gentle glow and infuses the scene with an allegorical feeling of afterlife – further highlighted by a halo of hatched neon trees on the canvas’ psychedelic horizon. Consistent with many of her greatest works, Dead Zebra teeters between the sublime and the dystopian. The indigo skyline adds gravity to the discotheque of lively, lucid brushstrokes – which, sprawling in all directions, sets the frail and embryonic zebra against an Eden of mortality.
Sneeze 2, 2002
Phillips New-York: 18 May 2022
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 277,200
Dana Schutz – 20th Century & Contemporar… Lot 37 May 2022 | Phillips
DANA SCHUTZ
Sneeze 2, 2002
Oil on canvas
19 3/4 x 18 5/8 inches (50.2 x 47.3 cm)
Signed and dated “Dana Schutz 2002” on the reverse
Embodying the fantastical absurdity that defines Dana Schutz’s oeuvre, Sneeze 2 belongs to the artist’s early eponymous series that launched her career. Capturing her subject in the fleeting moment of sneezing, the present work is a kind of anti-portrait, immortalizing her figure on canvas in an undignified, yet undeniably human moment. Showcasing the artist’s dynamic brushwork, gestural strokes and splatters of yellow, green, and blue pigment appear to ricochet out of the canvas through their rich impasto to render an explosion of torrential discharge. Transforming the mundane into the incendiary, Sneeze 2 exemplifies the artist’s unique painterly sensibility of reimagining the ordinary through the grotesque.
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Character Bust, 1770-1783. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Image: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
Eschewing direct observation or the use of photographic sources, Schutz amalgamates memory, imagination, and humor in conceiving her imagery, an approach that began early on in her career with works such as Sneeze 2. Painted in 2002, the year of the artist’s graduation from Columbia University’s MFA program, the present work is one of three Sneeze paintings created between 2001 and 2002, one of which is in the permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. The other was first purchased by artist Erik Parker—whose eccentric abstractions Schutz deeply admires—at her two-person show at Zach Feuer Gallery, New York the following year. “It felt like a breakthrough,” the artist explained of the success with her Sneeze paintings. “I had a sense of clarity and purpose, even if it was just an invented one.” This set Schutz on the course of her now highly acclaimed practice that envisions unconventional subject matters of daily life. As she once expressed, she would “rather paint the wrinkle on a man’s forehead than the opening of the Olympics.” On her fascination with the sneezing subject, the artist explained, “A sneeze is difficult to observe, so it felt like that was maybe the only way that you could paint it, through a way of trying to imagine how that could work…Painting, in a way, is a kind of compressed narrative which can happen just with gesture itself; there is a speed to it, there is a moment, and it is a kind of frozen moment.”
Francis Bacon, Head IV, 1949. Hayward Gallery, London. Artwork: © 2022 Estate of Francis Bacon/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London
Characterized by a high-key palette and gestural brushwork, Schutz’s works convey her exploration on the possibilities of expressive color through figuration. For Schutz, materiality and representation go hand in hand—and ultimately become one. “I respond to [the] slippage between material and the image. But when I am really into a painting, I stop thinking that I am using paint to represent things,” she elucidated. “The paint becomes grass or snot or skin or whatever. I also like the thought of painting as a descriptive or poetic action, like painting as an adjective or an adverb.” In Sneeze 2, the color and viscosity of mucous and paint play in this semiotic slippage as Schutz’s painterly process further echoes the reactive bodily functions in the act of sneezing. Here, the artist situates herself in the tradition of the grotesque as seen in Francis Bacon’s portraits, while conjuring the great influence of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh on her palette.
By capturing the wincing reaction of the sneezing man, the present work reflects Schutz’s abiding interest in the way we express emotion. With the figure’s scrunched forehead—suggested by the various colored streaks of paint that masterfully engage with the effects of light—and his tightly shut eyes, Schutz “wanted [the] head to kind of feel almost flattened in this kind of explosion.” In doing so, she emphasizes not the appearance but the feeling of the action, a quality paramount to the artist’s work. In the present work, Schutz further captures this in the semi-translucent layer of red pigment over the figure’s forehead, evoking the boiling tension of an oncoming sneeze that detonates on the canvas. It is this aspect of Schutz’s painterly language—the ability to imbue her subjects with a distressed psychological weight—that characterizes her best work. “Schutz’s paintings are the product of a kind of ‘what if–ness’—someone caught in mid-sneeze, a group of middle-aged men on a sensitivity retreat…decidedly unnarcissistic images of humanity,” in David Salle’s words. “They have the look of feelings made external. They give a sense of the great freedom of mind at the core of painting, the exhilaration of it [in Schutz’s work].”
Smokers, 2021
Christie’s New-York: 9 November 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,830,000
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976) (christies.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (B. 1976)
Smokers, 2021
Oil on canvas
72×48 inches (182.9 x 121.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2021’ (on the reverse)
Noted for her dynamically introspective oeuvre, Dana Schutz has become one of the preeminent painters working in figurative abstraction today. Smokers is a feverish example of the artist’s ability to combine representational subjects with a supple application of thick, energetic brushstrokes. Figures and creatures intertwine in a mass of dripping lines and impasto color. Though known for the psychological content of her canvases from the beginning, the artist’s recent works have become even more emotionally charged as the real world has filtered into the space of the picture plane. Focusing on issues of social justice, climate change, and equality, her dynamic paintings often integrate art historical references with contemporary issues. Rendered in a flurry of emotive brushstrokes and a combination of fleshy tones and acid color, Smokers, in simple terms, depicts two figures. Expanding outward, we note the confluence of the two bodies with each other as well as they begin merging with the overall scene. Set amidst a blue-green backdrop with a vibrant dot of a moon in the upper left, the two subjects light and smoke cigarettes while dogs writhe about their bare, sinuous legs. The ground is nearly inscrutable but seems to contain other animals and objects that wiggle and squirm in a volatile mass. The two people have large heads and downcast eyes with clearly defined noses and lips that emerge from the paint in profile. Their hair and clothes mix with the smoke from the cigarettes they are lighting, and the small flame between them casts a warm hue on the center of the composition.
Swiss Family Traveling, 2015
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,482,000
DANA SCHUTZ
Swiss Family Traveling, 2015
oil on canvas
84×88 inches (213.4 x 223.5 cm)
Signed and dated “Dana Schutz 2015” on the reverse
A maelstrom of vibrant color and fractured form, Swiss Family Traveling, 2015, exemplifies Dana Schutz’s painterly breakdown of space and volume. Flailing limbs, flushed faces, and contorted figures command the composition as Schutz’s neo-Cubist brushwork fragments objects and bodies into bold geometric planes. The result is a clenched composition that teems with all of the anticipatory stress of family holiday travel, offset by a sun-drenched palette and lively sense of humor. Structuring the chaos with crystalline painterly logic, Schutz depicts a quotidian but decontextualized scene rendered slightly strange as she conjures a vision of reality that has an element of the theater of the absurd about it.
Combining vivid figuration with jarring asymmetric geometries, Swiss Family Traveling epitomizes the fragmented style through which Schutz captures the complexities of human experience. Schutz positions a stylishly attired family within a storm of visual tumult as she arranges the jagged planes of vibrant color; the competing passages of hue and texture warp together, isolating each family member and pressing them deeper into the churning frenzy. The intense structure of the composition imparts a stressful, claustrophobic effect, recalling the oversaturated multitudes and feverish overstimulation of destinations like the Champs-Elysées and Times Square. Compressed under this immense pressure, Swiss Family Traveling shatters into discordant planes of visceral color, establishing a vibrating dissonance that imbues the work with hectic dynamism. Schutz reprises the pioneering effects of synthetic cubism to create the multicolored scramble of competing planes that exaggerates the tensions conveyed; the result is a scattered delirium that buzzes with uneasy emotion, marrying form and function to dizzying effect.
Bain de Soleil, 2016
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
HKD 15,250,000 / USD 1,963,915
Bain de Soleil, 2016
Oil on canvas
74×84 inches (188 x 213.5 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Dana Schutz 2016’ (on the reverse)
In Bain de Soleil, Dana Schutz fills her large-scale painting with the image of a glamourous woman lying on a beach, under the glare of a sweltering sun. As hinted at in the title (Bain de Soleil translates from the French as ‘to sunbath’), the figure of the woman is partly inspired by the advertisements for suntan lotion that Schutz saw as a child. Using this early memory, she enters into a dialogue about Western notions of beauty, and how it is portrayed in art in particular. The present work forms part of Schutz’s dynamic practice in which she draws inspiration from the issues facing contemporary society, often seen through the lens of the mass media. Combining striking figuration with sharp abstract geometries, Bain de Soleil epitomizes the fragmented painterly language through which Schutz attempts to capture the complexities of human experience, a language admired internationally for its visceral power and resonance.
With her face shielded from the harsh effects of the sun by a large wide-brimmed hat, and her eyes hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses, we know little about the woman depicted here. Her contorted and tanned body is dressed in a simple white swimsuit, and adorned by a string of pearls that hangs down from her neck. She sits on a small beach towel, her only companion a neon-blue crab that scuttles across the sand at her feet. A large yellow sun beats down from the sky, its radiant heat palpable in the burnished, almost red, hues of her skin tones, and the deep shadows cast across her face. This scene of idyllic perfection is then disrupted by the looming dark wave that hovers ominously behind her, seemingly preparing to wash away the entire scene.
God 2, 2013
Sotheby’s New-York: 12 May 2021
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 1,714,000
God 2 | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
God 2, 2013
Oil on canvas
106×72 inches (269.2 x 182.9 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2013 on the reverse
A testament to the visual potency of Dana Schutz’s distinctive artistic vernacular, God 2 is a painterly tour-de-force, enveloping the viewer in a mesmerizing cascade of dystopian figuration. Executed in 2013, the present work epitomizes Schutz’s celebrated visual style, through which the artist powerfully fuses abstraction and figuration by means of expressive imagination, fragmented bodies, and thrillingly impossible scenarios. Within the ravaged pictorial space of the present work, a flurry of fractured shapes and planes resolve to reveal a mythic central figure: teeth bared, arms akimbo, this creature is at once fantastical and ferocious, dwelling in the realm between deity and monstrosity.
Describing her work in terms particularly reminiscent of God 2, Schutz reflects: “Recently I have been making paintings of sculptural goddesses, transitory still lives, people who make things, people who are made and people who have the ability to eat themselves.” She continues, “Although the paintings themselves are not specifically narrative, I often invent imaginative systems and situations to generate information. These situations usually delineate a site where making is a necessity, audiences potentially don’t exist, objects transcend their function and reality is malleable.” (Dana Schutz cited in: Exh. Cat., London, Victoria Miro, ‘Painting 2004: Group Exhibition’, 2004 (online)) Testifying to her international acclaim, Schutz’s paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; and the Tel Aviv Museum; Israel, among many others.
Surging forth from a background of neon colors and crisply delineated shapes, the central figure of God 2 powerfully disrupts the familiarity of figuration and abstraction. Full of color and movement, the figure occupies space with a surprising potency for a creature which could never exist in reality, irresistibly capturing the viewer’s imagination. An artist whose work has been described as “teetering on the edge of tradition and innovation,” Schutz’s paintings mine both art history and her own potent visual imagination to collapse time, space and reason within her two-dimensional picture plane. Powerfully exemplified in God 2, her oeuvre draws on the legacies of such touchstone figures such as George Grosz and Max Beckmann, while always allowing Schutz’s own unique talent to explore the expansive possibilities of the painterly medium today. The artist describes, “My paintings are loosely based on metanarratives. The pictures float in and out of pictorial genres. Still lifes become personified, portraits become events and landscapes become constructions. I embrace the area between which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive.” (The artist in 2004, quoted in: Victoria Miro Gallery, Painting 2004: Group Exhibition, March 2004 (online))
Lion Eating Its Tamer, 2015
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 14,000,000
HKD 9,307,000 / USD 1,455,924
DANA SCHUTZ (b.1976)
Lion Eating Its Tamer, 2015
Oil on canvas
84×88 inches (213.2 x 223.8 cm)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse
In equal parts macabre, comical, and psychologically complex, Dana Schutz’s magnificent Lion Eating Its Tamer combats raw visceral figuration with fractured geometric abstraction, epitomizing the artist’s acclaimed comic-grotesque vision. The almost biblical imagery in the present work functions perhaps as an allegory of painting: “A lion, his gigantic head typical of a Schutz protagonist, is shown defeating his tamer. Emerging from what looks like a canvas depicted within the work, the lion’s brush-like tail bears traces of green and purple paint. The lion is of course Painting itself, intent on devouring the helpless painter” (Jeff Frederick, “Dana Schutz”, Art in America, 30 October 2015). The work was painted in 2015, a period when Schutz often conceived of figures trapped in enclosed spaces or environs such as elevators. While these works function as metaphors for the struggle of human life within constrictions or challenges, Lion Eating Its Tamer seems to allude specifically to the painter battling with his craft in the arena of the canvas. The vast, exhilarating work confronts viewers head-on, its cascading fractured shapes and crisp planes slicing through the familiarity of figuration and objectivity. The ravaged pictorial space is nevertheless radiant, luminous in a chromatic unity anchored by Schutz’s signature gradated golds. In contrast to Max Beckmann’s docile crouching lion in Lion Tamer, Circus, Schutz’s glorious beast emerges victorious: art has triumphed, and so has its heroic painter.