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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs 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. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.