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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the highest level.