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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment 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 artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.