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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes 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 era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a person given a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. 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 crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.