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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems 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 sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against 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 biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.