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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in 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 pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.