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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find 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. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work 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.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.