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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, 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 painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, 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

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work 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 social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.