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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with 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 large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – 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 identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. 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.