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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, 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 artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. 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 art at the top tier.