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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace 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 masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting 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 individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims 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, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.