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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – 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 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 culture wars, a time 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 angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.