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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems 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 recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.