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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset 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 since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.