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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through 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 generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager 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. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. 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 society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.