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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, 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 support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – 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 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.