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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, 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 history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait 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 works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

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

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time 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.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.