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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, 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 long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – 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 displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.