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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation 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 mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, 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 Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be removed. 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 late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, 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 transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.