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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a person given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death 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 painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.