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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural 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.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going 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 first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts 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 figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like 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 public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.