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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists 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 losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures 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 pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.