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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through 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, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know 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 two white men in Mississippi 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. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other 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 individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.