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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss 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. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness 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 (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work 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.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched 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. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.