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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. 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.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal 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 highest level.