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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.