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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.