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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, 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 Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.