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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural 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

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing 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, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that support 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 golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, 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 a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – 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 saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, 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 emotional, mournful painting.

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 unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.