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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of 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 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. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline 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 identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done 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 brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.