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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded 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, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure 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.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.