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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements 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 an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably 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 highest level.