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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. 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 big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.