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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

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

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.