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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.