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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.