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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before 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 crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands 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 a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. 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. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. 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 top tier.