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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered 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. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.