🔗 Share this article The Artist Dana Schutz Exhibition Overview: A Feast of Gloop from the Artist Who Shocked New York The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them. Schutz's Approach Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate. Works in the First Gallery The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their wake. In another features a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is transforming all to rubbish. The Kiss by the artist. Shift in Focus In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in a bed. Influences and Allusions This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the works. A Model by the exhibitor. Interpretation and Narratives Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke. The 2017 Scandal And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work each day, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced 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 move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical art at the top tier.