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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery 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 roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. 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 read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, 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 a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier 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 professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.