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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her first proper London show 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

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. A different work presents a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.