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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness 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 mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character 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 the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.