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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure 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 female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, 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 history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model 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 Renaissance masterpiece 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 the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.