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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, 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

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.