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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. 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, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction 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.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, 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 Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work daily, and some called for 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 biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.