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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. 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 Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in 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 James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). 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

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, 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 heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.