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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages 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 texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

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

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the work daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced 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 Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.