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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds 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 golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. 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 Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting 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 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.