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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed 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 provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.