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The American painter smothers her canvases 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 – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level 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 while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness 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 history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. 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 two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. 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 same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.