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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters 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 losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms 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 console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.