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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.