{"data":{"id":"10019","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":10019,"topgoose_id":562,"tms_id":10019,"display_name":"Dana Schutz","sort_name":"Schutz Dana","display_date":"1976–","begin_date":"1976","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eGarnering critical attention from the\noutset of her career, Dana Schutz is known\nfor cartoonish figures and narrative-\ninfused compositions that draw upon the\nhistory of painting. Often depicting\ndystopic scenarios, though with wit and\nhumor, Schutz’s paintings have featured\n“self-eaters”—figures who devour their own\nhands, arms, chests, and even faces—as\nwell as a character named Frank, whom the\nartist imagines in a scenario in which she\nis the last painter alive and he the last man\non Earth. Alluding to the works of René\nMagritte, Pablo Picasso, and \u003ca href=\"/artists/545\"\u003ePhilip Guston\u003c/a\u003e,\nmany of Schutz’s compositions can be\ninterpreted as investigations of what\npainting means today—bodies being broken\napart, dissected, augmented, digested,\nand reassembled evoke the very process\nof constructing a painting. Likewise, her\npointed references to celebrity, technology,\nhistory, and current events bring to light\nthe varied topics painting can address in the\ntwenty-first century.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer 2012 drawing \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/42683\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBuilding the Boat\nWhile Sailing\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e shares its title with a large- scale painting she made prior to the work on paper. The figures in both are busily engaged in various activities, from useful actions like sawing wood to less industrious ones like squirting water from one’s mouth. Schutz based the overall composition on Théodore Géricault’s \u003cem\u003eThe Raft of the\nMedusa,\u003c/em\u003e an iconic early nineteenth-century painting of a shipwreck featuring—not unlike her own work—living and dead bodies in various states of distress.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500126065","wikidata_id":"Q5214826","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:43:59.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-27T07:00:26.858-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/10019/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/10019/exhibitions"}}}}