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

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing 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 truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian 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 artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.