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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, 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 shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American 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. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.