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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, 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 allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time 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, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image 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 society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.