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

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; 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 woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a 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 Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably 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 art at the top tier.