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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements 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 a particular work is a portrait 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 works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time 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 since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.