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Surgery by Dana Schutz

Surgery, Dana Schutz (2004)

Are little girls all made of sugar and spice and everything nice?

As you'll discover in this painting, the truth is laid out a bit differently. The complexities of who we are is the basis of Women and Gender Studies at JCCC. And perhaps there is no better place to reinforce that than the painting Surgery at the Nerman Museum of Art by Dana Schutz.

Theresa Bembnister of Pitch Weekly wrote shortly after Bruce Hartman acquired the work:

"Surgery is a creepily spectacular commentary on the meanness of little girls. Seven of them gather around what resembles an oversized Operation game board there's a glassy-eyed little girl lying exposed on the examination table.

The top of her skull has been sliced cleanly off, her limbs lie across the table bent at awkward angles and her chest is an open cavity. Three of the girls lean over their specimen, picking at her with instruments in their gloved hands. The happy-colored palette -- girly pinks, comforting yellows and warm oranges -- and the checkered picnic tablecloth make for a pleasant backdrop.
But they're in stark contrast to the emotionless, calculating expressions on the girls' faces".

Major Influences on Schutz

Entry of Christ into Brussels (1888)

Schutz's artistic influences can be described as Post-Impressionist. Schutz has been referred to as:

The "Ensor on vacation in Tahiti with Gauguin."

James Ensor, a Belgium artist (1860 - 1949), was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth century. Ensor's look at modernity was through his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing.

(http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/ensor/#/intro/)

Influences - cont.

Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where are we Going? Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin (the post-impressionist) is known for his use of color -- themes of primitivism and Symbolism (Symbolism in painting -- to exaggerate, attenuate or deform an object's qualities not merely in furtherance of the artist’s individual vision but in service of the "needs of the idea to be expressed.").

Artistic Representation

Depth is created by Schutz's use of color.

• Painting as sculpture: "I often think of painting as building, like I'm building the space". The paint sometimes grows out of the canvas as the artist builds up in relief thick layers of paint. In other instances, she projects blobs of saturated paint onto the surface that disrupt the imagery and emphasize the surface plane, or add another level to the pictorial space.

• Art depicting humor, as seen in her various art pieces: Her tropical cannibals, choppy surgeons, paranoid patients, and self-devouring figures

• Child playing as a creator... Whimsical. Free of adult vengeance? Imaginary story telling

My Interpretations

To me, Surgery leads to multiple levels of analysis artistically, contextually and culturally:

For example, her character in another work, Twin Parts (at right), pictured in the process of building itself from spare body parts (or taking itself apart) seems engaged in a painterly process -- building an image to portray the self. (The construction of the art process).

• That construction metaphor also hints at the way we interact with one another and the commercial world

• The Man-eaters (series) with works such as The Reformers (2003) are not portraits of men and women consumed with self-loathing. Rather, they are Schutz's vision of a self-sufficient race -- they eat themselves, and rebuild themselves out of their own feces. The question is raised as to why do they need to rebuild themselves?

• For example, in The Autopsy of Michael Jackson (2005) while we all know of the artistic construction and reconstruction of the man himself, did his obsession over body image lead to construction or deconstruction. Timely piece.

• This theme of interaction and commercialization is a theme also put forward in her paintings of "Self-eaters."

AND no doubt, our focus today on Surgery . While critics don’t necessarily see as a central component to her work, there is a current of feminist criticism in Schutz's treatment of “our bodies and ourselves.”

What intrigues me most about this painting are it's psychological, sociological and socio-political / feminist perspective implications.

Psychological Interpretations

A painting is a visual representation of not only the artist’s external experience, but it is also a reflection of the artist’s inner thoughts as well. Thus the science of psychology can help us understand what the artist may be communicating through there work.

Here are some of my thoughts in a psychological interpretation of Surgery.

1. Is it to be expected that elementary school-age developmentally-speaking girls, go through a "mean" stage? Is bullying a reflection of in-group and/or out-group attributions?
2. Innocent play leads to destructive outlets -- expressions of our internal instincts? Freudian?
3. Extending the Freudian interpretation, are these young girls experiencing dissociation—angst over their own bodies, or more so, the formation of identity (Oh at such a young age) lending to their lack of emotions. Psychologically relieving their anxiety through acts without emotions - a defense mechanism of displacement? (Schutz is one hundred percent present (in her paintings), asserting the conditions of anxiety - extremes of abandonment, loathing of various kinds, and dismemberment - as if they were displays in a theme park (Free Times, 2006). Is their emotional void a defense mechanism towards their primitive actions?
4. Sticking with a developmental stage theory perspective, Erikson’s industry stage comes to mind. Through their actions (of surgery -- cutting up and then sewing back up), are they avoiding an individual sense of inferiority?
5. From the social psychology literature, could group conformity lead to sense of being anonymous. Though one sees differences between the girls (e.g., ethnicity and religion), there is something very similar in look between them—leading to sense of being anonymous, and as such, destructive acts.
6. Assumption here is that the mean-ness lies within the individual, there is no context generating the behaviors.

Sociological Interpretations

George Herbert Mead comes to mind when Schutz herself posits that we objectify ourselves and as Cate McQuaid (Boston Globe, 2006) observes this makes for the self, raising delicious questions about identity.

In Social Interactionism, it is through participation in the social act of communication that the individual realizes their potential for significantly symbolic behavior. Action is very important to our constructions of self. The self arises when the individual becomes an object to themselves. Mead argued that we are objects first to other people, and secondarily we become objects to ourselves by taking the perspective of other people. In joint activity, which Mead called 'social acts', humans learn to see themselves from the standpoint of their co-actors. It is through realizing ones role in relation to others that selfhood arises.

Are these elementary school children trying to understand their gender role behaviors as well as gendered identity via these acts? Their introspective looks (of curiosity -- rather than being void of emotions).

Socio-Political and Feminist Perspectives

I do think we need to see how, in Schutz's early work, she seems to, perhaps, naively assume the individual is the center force in the construction piece (private acts), while in her newer works she makes explicit, what the contemporary psychological theorist, Erie Bronfenbrenner references as the macro-level -- the social political influences on the micro and mesosystem -- social structures and values influence our human development -- our own ability to construct or reconstruct identity.

For feminists, what is “personal is political.” So should we take this piece and preface it as a feminist piece?

If so, one does have to look at the role of commercialization and other social, structural forces which make girls and women question body image---Is Surgery a question about body image and the reconstruction of it? It is a curiosity of young women to see what a female body looks like? Unlike Shutz’s original theme, are these girls objectified?

Further, is identity static-- or fluid -- constantly in flux due to the changing social interactions and role expectations (e.g, sociologists like Goffman’s or as discussed earlier Mead)?

Are the “surgeons” deconstructing in order to reconstruct? Note that one of the girls is sewing up what was “dismantled”…If so, what is the new reconstruction? What comes to mind is the Black feminist Audre Lorde's "The Master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"—meaning, using present legal and social system-it's hard to take apart a defective system by following it's rules—still patriarchic in structure and social acts when there is just cosmetic change. Need to consider race and gender both. (Note the diversity of the females being represented—which is also essential in more deeply understanding Lorde).

Is this act symbolically a way to free these girls of gender divisions on multiple (private and public) levels? Is it freeing young girls of stereotypes, gender expectations, historical and cultural inequalities?

One Last Contextual Point

Historical events influence all of us.

Schutz’s body of work has all been produced in a post 9/11 world.

Dana Schutz in 2009

Dana's Bio - Part 1

The body of her work is as a young artist (under 30); She's only been on the art scene since 2002. She completed her MFA in 2008 from Columbia University. Born 1976.
By 2005, her work was already part of the MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) contemporary collection; Museums where her work is installed include:

Colby Museum of Art, Waterford ME
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Honart Museum, Tehran, Iran
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
MART - Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy
Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal, Canada
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (MOCA)
Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Dana's Bio - Part 2

Solo exhibits include the Zach Feuer Gallery (of New York—formerly LFL) and here at the Nerman (2004). Others include:

2009 Missing Pictures, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY
2008 If It Appears In The Desert, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany
2007 Stand By Earth Man, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY
2006 Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002-2005, Rose Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH
2005 Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
Teeth Dreams and Other Supposed Truths, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany
*2004 JCCC/Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS
Panic, Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL), New York, NY
Self Eaters and the People Who Love Them, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
Run, Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, MA
2002 Frank From Observation, LFL Gallery, New York, NY

Dana's Bio - Part 3

• Her style is deeply indebted to San Francisco Bay area figurative giants David Park and Elmer Bischoff

• In a interview for BOMB, Schutz herself discusses Kandinsky's work (A Russian artist (1866 - 1944), one of the first abstract artists who labeled his devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and deep spiritual desire inner necessity, which was a central aspect of his art. He too focused on the vibrancy of color.

A Summary of Schutz's Work Through 2005

"Dissection and dismemberment abound in Dana Schutz's work, all offset by sunny colors and a pert sense of humor" (Mei Chin, 2006, BOMB 2005, Spring 2006).

- Autopsy of Michael Jackson
- Self-Portrait As A Pachyderm
- Man Eater (part of the Self-Eaters series), e.g., FaceEaters; Twin Parts, New Legs; Lovers
- Frank from "Observation" series, e.g., Frank as Proboscis Monkey; Frank on a Rock; Night in Day; The Breeders; Fifty Foot Queennie

More recent pieces

-Civil Planning (with Condoleezza Rice at the center)
- Hand
- Men’s Retreat

A Video Interview with Dana Schutz