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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy 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, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.