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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

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 keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms 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 other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

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, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American 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. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.