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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd 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 angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

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, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined 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 remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.