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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse 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. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.