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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry 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 since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.