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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. 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 long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work features a figure receiving a large disguise in some bizarre ceremony in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the crowds that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple comfort one another in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

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 young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of black pain was the biggest story 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 world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.