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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering 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 identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.