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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded 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 texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty 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 shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. 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 large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, 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 identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist 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 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 angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.