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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.