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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you 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 off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

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 two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered 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 exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier 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 professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.