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

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, 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). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.