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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards 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 all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, 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, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.