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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality 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, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s 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 angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.