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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. 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, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled 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 allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. 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.