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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness 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, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. 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 people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.