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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some 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. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.