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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists 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 shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back 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 two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.