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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, 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 figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. 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 an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.