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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes 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 figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since 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, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.