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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, 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.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow 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 golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness 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 portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story 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 identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably 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 top tier.