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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show 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 era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work features a figure given a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, 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 a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back 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 shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.