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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. 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 crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. 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 big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline 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. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.