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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute 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 painters of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology 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 leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.