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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony 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 furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi 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 personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.