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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery 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 collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested 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 provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.