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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.