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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know 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 the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.