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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded 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 texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, 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 a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.