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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

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 stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities 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 Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.