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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.