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Dana Schutz smothers her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, 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 while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

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. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – while in other works a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time 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 seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.