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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition 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 – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces 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, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open 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 narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.