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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. 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. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

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 ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.