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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards 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, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. 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 Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian 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 that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators 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 personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, 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

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.