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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her 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 painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. 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 identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.