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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. 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 world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

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 ordeal a changed artist. 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.