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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, 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 Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.