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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about 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 plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms 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 – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David 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 analysis. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.