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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, 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 generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s plenty to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other 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 individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.