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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers 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.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s 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 increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.