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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these 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 waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with 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 a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.