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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.