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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.