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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute 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 figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

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 themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – 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 displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.