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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time 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 seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.