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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

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, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since 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, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.