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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, 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 semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time 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 since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged 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 highest level.