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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

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 stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work features a person given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene 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, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.