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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in some bizarre 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 turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of 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 golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.