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

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her era – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, 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.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow 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 – while in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, covered in allusions. 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 large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, 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 hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.