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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David 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 interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed 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 painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline 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. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.