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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded 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 all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work 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 littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.