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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work features a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.