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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before 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 furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, 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 identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.