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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.