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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a large disguise in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.