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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.