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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded 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 surface, brush strokes, 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 long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.