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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and others called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.