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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper 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.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy 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 turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character 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.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work daily, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.