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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual 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 how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state 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 personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.