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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing 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, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow 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 additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified 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

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.