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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. 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 Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.