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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

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

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent 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 social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.