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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward 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.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic 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 ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.