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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. 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, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a figure given a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. 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 a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. 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 scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.