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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, 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 roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy 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 painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene 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 identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.