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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – 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 work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out 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 highest level.