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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important 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 losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries 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 one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.