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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes 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 focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.