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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy immersing 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 truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward 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.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in Mississippi 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. An activist demonstrated against the painting each day, and some called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.