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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, 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 plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent culture wars, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.