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Dana Schutz cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through 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 era – is all about surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure given a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork 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 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.