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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant 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 painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, 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 paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures 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 other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work daily, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline 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. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.