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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another presents a person given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours 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 leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the work daily, and some demanded it to be removed. 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 social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal 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 highest level.