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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, 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 painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before 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 angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a pair console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other 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 angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience 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 highest level.