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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. 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. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary 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 other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation 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 (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s 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 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 career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.