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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but some big messages 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 all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals 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 trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde 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 crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.