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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration 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 a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, 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 fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting 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 angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.