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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. 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 crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, 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 angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.