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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on 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 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 first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.