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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another presents a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find 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, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait 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

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested 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 that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain 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 same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.