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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers 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.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing 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 truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than 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 sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back 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 racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate 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 work daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.