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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded 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 texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find 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. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods 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 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 meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back 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 racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.