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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; 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 dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, 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 depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

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 influence. She unavoidably came out of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.