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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.