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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, 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 (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.