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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work presents a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, 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 one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.