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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, 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 generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, 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 plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure 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 works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.