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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – 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, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward 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 the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. 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.