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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, 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 Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.