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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

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 black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent 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, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.