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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

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 off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, 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 art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the work daily, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.