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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of 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.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, 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 man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators 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. An activist picketed the painting each day, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.