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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of 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 societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.