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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – 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, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes 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 collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified 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 Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.