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Dana Schutz cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, 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 truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in some bizarre initiation ritual before a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, covered in references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that a particular work is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.