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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting 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 littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators 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 profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.