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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy 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, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – 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 society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.