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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus 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 religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal 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 top tier.