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

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits 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 redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests 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 a symbolist master, 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 art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example 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, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

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