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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, 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, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). 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

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.