Dana Schutz, known for her large paintings, which combine riotous color with distorted figurative forms, producing scenes as emotional as they are ambiguous, first came to attention with her inaugural exhibition Frank From Observation (2002), based on the conceit of Schutz as the last painter, representing the last subject “Frank”—a kind of quirky and sincere endgame to the history of art and civilization. Her retrospective If the Face Had Wheels opened at the Neuberger Museum at the end of 2011 and a new exhibition of recent work, Piano in the Rain (May 2 – June 16, 2012), opened at Friedrich Petzel Gallery last month. In her freshly empty studio in Brooklyn, Schutz sat down with Jarrett Earnest to talk about her paintings...