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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace 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. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (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 elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.