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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute 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 generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention 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 religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.